Design improvements of composite aerospace structures using reliability analsysis

The need of improvements in engineering designs especially with composite materials is nowadays a major request of the aerospace industry. Deterministic approaches are unable to take into account all the variabilities that characterize composites properties without oversizing structures. The necessity of assessing the probability of failure of a particular design requires a new methodology based on reliability analysis and design optimization through probabilistic models of physical properties. This paper intends to give a brief description of the most used methods for reliability analysis and point out the advantages of the application of these methods to shift from a deterministic to a probabilistic approach. Thus a methodology will be outlined that could serve as a guideline to develop a more efficient and optimized design process with particular focus on computational issues that could arise through the application of reliability analysis. Some application examples will be given to better explain the new methodology and the necessary theoretical background needed to understand the results; particular interest will be given to design optimization and its advantages in engineering designs.status: publishe