DIRECT ANALYSIS METHOD FOR PROBABILISTIC FRACTURE-MECHANICS

A new method for solving problems of probabilistic fracture mechanics (PFM) is proposed. A process of crack growth is reduced into an iterat ive integration equation with respect to the probabilistic distributio n functions of crack geometry using approximate independence, which we have introduced. The integration equation which has a form of Stieltj es integral is solved by a numerical method. Some PFM problems are sol ved using the present method, and the results are compared with those by the MC method. Failure probabilities obtained from both calculation s agree well. Execution time of the present method is shown to be rema rkably short.