Safety Envelope for Load Tolerance and its Application to Fatigue Reliability Design

Abstract

In this paper, a safety envelope concept for load tolerance is introduced. This shows the capacity of the current design as a future reference for design upgrade, maintenance, and control. The safety envelope is applied to estimate the load tolerance of a structural part with respect to the fatigue reliability. First, the dynamic load history is decomposed into the average value and amplitude, which are modeled as random variables. Second, through fatigue analysis and uncertainty propagation, the reliability is calculated. Last, based on the implicit function evaluation for the reliability, the boundary of the safety envelope is calculated numerically. The effect of different distribution types of random variables is then investigated to identify the conservative envelope. In order to improve the efficiency of searching the boundary, probabilistic sensitivity information is utilized. When the relationship between the safety of the system and the load tolerance is linear or mildly nonlinear, the linear estimation of the safety envelope turns out to be accurate and efficient. During the application of the algorithm, a stochastic response surface of logarithmic fatigue life with respect to the load capacity coefficient is constructed, and the Monte Carlo simulation is utilized to calculate the reliability and its sensitivities.