Time-Dependent Reliability Analysis of Mechanical Structures using an Analytical Approach

Abstract

Time-dependent reliability analysis of mechanical structures is concerned by the use of an outcrossing approach. In this approach the so-called outcrossing rate plays a critical role and thus it is important to estimate it as straight ward as possible. Despite the availability of a variety of methods to estimate this rate in the literature, still more general and at the same time less sophisticated approaches are desired. In this paper, an analytical method is proposed to evaluate the required outcrossing rate in which the basics of "Parallel System Reliability Formulation" in the framework of directional simulation are used. To indicate the accuracy and efficiency of the method, it is applied to carry out the reliability analysis of a hydrokinetic turbine blade. Since the random variables/processes involved in this analysis possess a set of extremely different variances (and thus make a so-called "non-proportional space); it is shown that the proposed method is also capable to satisfactorily employ a technique of directional importance sampling in order to prohibit massive computations, normally required in such spaces. The results of the analysis show that the proposed method could be successfully applied for the circumstances whose involving processes may be non-stationary and whose space of random variables/processes is extremely non-proportional.