On Fatigue Failure of a Multiple-Load-Path Redundant Structure

摘要

It is difficult to evaluate the survivorship or reliability function of a structure subject to fatigue consisting of a number of members from the survivorship functions of a single specimen that can be obtained from experiment. An attempt is therefore made to establish the upper and lower bounds of such a survivorship function under the assumption of constant amplitude fatigue and equal distribution of the load among the failure by Markovian processes. A numerical example employing the data of fatigue tests performed on 7075 Aluminum alloy single specimens indicates that the order of magnitude of the life of a composite structure can be reasonably well predicted by the estimate of the bounds according to the present method. (Author)