Due to initial cracks, careless construction, and extreme load conditions, components with brittle behavior may exist in a structural system. The presence of brittle behavior of components usually is accompanied by a low strength. However, existing methods for calculating the reliability of structures of components with brittle behavior are rather complicated or impossible. By means of decomposing the entire system into a set of subsystems, this paper proposed a method to estimate the bounds on failure probability of k-out-of-n system of components with potentially brittle behavior by using universal generating function (UGF) and linear programming (LP). Based on the individual component state probabilities and joint probabilities of the states of a small number of components, the proposed method can provide the bounds for the failure probability of a system with a large number of components. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method are investigated using numerical examples.
In recent years, researchers have been proposed various analytical methods to calculate the structural reliability. However, a series of low stress brittle fracture accidents occurred in steel structure, the brittle failure of steel members cannot be ignored. The analytical method of a steel structure with potentially brittle steel members was developed. The brittle failure of a steel members is represented by the brittle failure probability. However, the calculating method of brittle failure probability is still not clear. In order to evaluate structural reliability, the brittle failure probability should be more accurate. In this paper, a method was applied to calculate the brittle failure probability of steel members.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.