Selective enumeration method for identification of dominant failure paths of large structures
- WS Atkins Science and Technology, Epsom (United Kingdom)
Identification of dominant failure paths forms one of the major tasks in the system reliability evaluation of redundant structures using a failure-tree approach. The Branch-and-Bound method, commonly used for this purpose, is computationally very expensive when applied for the analysis of large structures, such as offshore jackets. A more efficient method is proposed in this paper which features selective enumeration and preferential branching. Based on the study of a number of influencing factors such as: component safety margins, structure`s closeness to failure, reliability indices of individual components and failure paths etc, a strategy for ordering of failure elements is derived. Enumeration from each node of the tree follows the order of importance of components and it is stopped once the truncation criterion is satisfied for one of the resulting branches. A truncation criterion is established in advance and is applied at each level of the analysis. The branch selection criterion accounts for statistical correlation between paths and the importance of the branch to system reliability. The proposed method has been implemented into the RASOS software and is demonstrated on a shallow-water jacket platform.
- OSTI ID:
- 55808
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-940230--; ISBN 0-7918-1265-0
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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