Analytic probabilistic safety analysis under severe uncertainty

Sadeghi, Jonathan and de Angelis, Marco and Patelli, Edoardo (2020) Analytic probabilistic safety analysis under severe uncertainty. ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering, 6 (1). 04019019. ISSN 2376-7642 (https://doi.org/10.1061/AJRUA6.0001028)

[thumbnail of Sadeghi-etal-JRUES-2019-Analytic-probabilistic-safety-analysis-under-severe-uncertainty]
Preview
Text. Filename: Sadeghi_etal_JRUES_2019_Analytic_probabilistic_safety_analysis_under_severe_uncertainty.pdf
Accepted Author Manuscript

Download (662kB)| Preview

Abstract

Exact analytic expressions are given to evaluate the reliability of systems consisting of components, connected in parallel or series, subject to imprecise failure distributions. We also proposed a simplified version of the first-order reliability method to deal with imprecision. This development allows engineers to evaluate the reliability of systems without having to resort to optimization techniques and/or Monte Carlo simulation. In addition, this framework does not need to assume a distribution for the epistemic uncertainty, which permits a robust analysis even with limited data. In this way, the approach removes a significant barrier to the modeling of epistemic uncertainties in industrial probabilistic safety analysis workflows.