Reliability study on dynamic problems of cyclic symmetric structures

A probabilistic finite element method (PFEM) is developed for accurate reliability analysis of complex cyclic symmetric structures. Based on the three-parameter reliability analytical method, the basic theory and calculation procedures of PFEM for cyclic symmetric structural dynamic problem are presented. The formulas for solving structural dynamic problems on three-dimensional PFEM are derived when the randomness occurs either in the material properties, geometric shapes, or a combination of them. The reliabilities of a cylindrical structure and a gear structure are evaluated by the approaches presented and compared with those obtained by Monte-Carlo method.