Abstract
Rotors of electric turbines can fail catastrophically due to brittle fracture developing over many cycles of operation, resulting in injury and death and multi-million dollar economic losses. Probability distributions for measures of strength and stress of rotors are defined. A closed form solution is obtained for stress at any cycle from a dynamic model for the growth of crack size. Reliability at the nth cycle is defined within a Bayesian estimation framework as the posterior probability that true strength exceeds stress given estimates for both as of the (n-1)st cycle. Absolute and conditional reliabilities at any cycle are then obtained. Ways of reporting uncertainties in the reliability estimates are discussed, in particular, possible sources of bias from model specification and from parameter estimation procedures. Finally, suggestions for research are made.
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© 1985 Plenum Press, New York
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Caulfield, E.M., Cronin, M.T., Fairley, W.B., Rallis, N.E. (1985). Turbine Rotor Reliability: A Probability Model for Brittle Fracture. In: Whipple, C., Covello, V.T. (eds) Risk Analysis in the Private Sector. Advances in Risk Analysis, vol 220. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2465-2_28
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2465-2_28
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