Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Quantification of Margins and Uncertainty for Multicomponent Systems

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1574738· OSTI ID:1574738
This report describes and illustrates several metrics for application to the analysis of a multicomponent system. Specifically, three metrics are calculated for each system component. The first metric is component failure probability (π). This will typically be expressed as the probability that a component performance variable (P) exceeds a specified or random threshold (T). The margin (M) for component performance is defined as M = P - T and will be the focus of analysis throughout this report. The second metric is referred to as margin to failure rate φ (MTFφ). This is an estimate of the allowable “slack” in component performance that could be tolerated to modify its failure rate from π to a user-specified value φ. The third and final metric is margin sensitivity (MS). This quantity orders components based on the degree to which changes in their failure rates are affected by shifts in their margin distributions. We first motivate the metrics in an idealized setting, and then expand to the typical application scenarios where they must be estimated from experimental or simulated data. In this environment, we discuss methods for estimating the metrics with uncertainty quantification.
Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
DOE Contract Number:
89233218CNA000001
OSTI ID:
1574738
Report Number(s):
LA-UR--19-31480
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

Robust approaches to quantification of margin and uncertainty for sparse data
Technical Report · Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · OSTI ID:1394061

Ideas underlying quantification of margins and uncertainties(QMU): a white paper.
Technical Report · Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 2006 · OSTI ID:891369

Assessment of seismic margin calculation methods
Technical Report · Tue Feb 28 23:00:00 EST 1989 · OSTI ID:6428052