Summary

This book pays special attention to the safety and endurance of mechanical structures such as aircraft, bridges, nuclear reactors and other structures subject to stochastic loads, and to how safety and endurance relate to material properties, production technology and design philosophy. By endurance, the authors understand the resistance of the structure to strength failures in critical zones of structural components. These failures are produced by fatigue damage processes in the broadest sense of the term. Emphasis is placed on the integration of physical and statistical approaches and large-scale testing of observational aspects, as well as on the dominant role of the probabilistic structure in the conceptual formulation of decision-making and life-estimating procedures for proving the serviceability (airworthiness, for example) of a new design. The book presents much practical and theoretical material based on experience with endurance problems in complex mechanical structures; this material was previously scattered throughout a variety of publications.