Probabilistic Aspects of Life Prediction

Book excerpt: As fatigue and fracture mechanics approaches are used more often for determining the useful life and/or inspection intervals for complex structures, realization sets-in that all factors are not well known or characterized. Indeed, inherent scatter exists in initial material quality and in material performance. Furthermore, projections of component usage in determination of applied stresses are inexact at best and are subject to much discrepancy between projected and actual usage. Even the models for predicting life contain inherent sources of error based on assumptions and/or empirically fitted parameters. All of these factors need to be accounted for to determine a distribution of potential lives based on combination of the aforementioned variables, as well as other factors. The purpose of this symposium was to create a forum for assessment of the state-of-the-art in incorporating these uncertainties and inherent scatter into systematic probabilistic methods for conducting life assessment.