A Risk Analysis Procedure for Aeronautical Components

This work describes a risk assessment procedure which has been developed by the authors to analyse the spreading of fatigue-induced damage in typical aeronautical components, also taking into account the effects of maintenance. The general model adopted in this procedure is based on a Markov propagation process, embedded in a Monte Carlo global integration strategy. The main feature of such a procedure is related to the modelling of the damage evolutionary process, not only to define the damage initiation step, but also to evaluate the transitional probabilities which characterize the passage from one damage level to a higher one and which is obviously related to time and to the damage state of surrounding zones. The evaluation of such transitional probabilities is often carried out by means of a mixed procedure, by using a probabilistic technique for the initiation phase and a deterministic one for propagation phase; in this work a fully probabilistic procedure has been considered.