Effects of Postfailure Material Behavior on System Reliability

Abstract

This paper investigates the reliability of systems considering the postfailure behavior of their components. The effects of system modeling type, correlation among the resistances of the components, coefficients of variation of loads and resistances, and the mean value of loads on the system reliability are analyzed using nondeterministic systems. The procedure for calculating the reliability of ductile, brittle, and ductile-brittle systems is provided, and the impact of postfailure material behavior factor on the system reliability is studied. Based on the proposed procedure, the reliability associated with ductile and brittle systems consisting of large number of components is evaluated, considering different system modeling types and several resistance correlation cases. Finally, a bridge example is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed approach.