Estimating Joint Failure Probability of Series Structural Systems

Abstract

The failure probability of a series structural system theoretically involves multidimensional integration and is usually difficult to calculate. The search for efficient computational procedures for estimating system reliability has resulted in several approaches, including bounding techniques and efficient Monte Carlo simulations. For the narrow bound method, the joint failure probability of every pair of failure modes needs to be calculated. In the present paper, in order to improve the accuracy of the narrow bound estimation method, a computationally effective point estimation method for calculating the joint probability of every pair of failure modes is proposed and examined for series systems. Based on the computational results of several illustrative examples, it can be seen that the results by the present method are in good agreement with those obtained through integration.