Time-Dependent Reliability Analysis of Oil Derrick Structures in Mechanism Failure Mode

Abstract

Most research studies on the reliability of oil derrick structures have focused on static reliability analysis. Strength degradation with time of oil derrick structures and mechanism failure should also be considered in reliability analysis. In order to address this issue, we propose a new time-dependent reliability analysis method for oil derrick structures in mechanism failure mode and apply it to a tower derrick structure. We used the Monte Carlo finite element method to compute the static failure probability of each derrick component, and steps were employed to determine the main failure mechanisms. The time-dependent failure probabilities of each derrick component in the main failure mechanisms were calculated by the total probability theorem. The time-dependent reliability of a derrick structure system was obtained by considering the system as a series of parallel subsystems. A tower derrick example was used to demonstrate the accuracy and applicability of the proposed method. The results revealed that the proposed method is accurate and reliable.