Introduction to the proceedings of the international seminar on structural reliability of mechanical components and subassemblies of Nuclear Power Plants

Abstract

Although the integrity and safety of many mechanical components and subassemblies of nuclear power plants are demonstrated by the appropriate design codes and supplementary requirements, such procedures seldom provide guidance as to “how safe” the structures are. By combining the technologies of solid mechanics and probabilistic structural reliability methods, engineers are finding many and varied opportunities to demonstrate margins in terms of probabilities of failure. With reference to the large mechanical system components typical of nuclear power plants, reliability assessments are receiving more emphasis in recent years as evidenced by the increased attention to such reliability-related techniques as failure mode and effects analyses, fault tree analyses, common cause failure analyses, and single point failure analyses. These techniques are ordinarily applied at the outset in a qualitative manner, tracing the casual sequences of potential component failure. The results of these analyses serve as the foundation for more sophisticated probabilistic structural reliability analyses which have the objective of calculating the probability of failure (that is, unreliability) of the system or component in question.