On the Evaluation of System Reliability Through Automatic Generation of Failure Modes

This paper proposes a method for the evaluation of structural failure probability taking into account all the potential failure modes. At first, the failure paths to produce failure modes are generated by using the Branch-and-Bound method combined with a Matrix Method, which enables one to evaluate the probabilities of occurrence for the neglected failure modes. Then, a method is developed to estimate the lower and upper bounds of structural failure probability, using the generated failure paths. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.