Sankaran Mahadevan and Song Han

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

Multidisciplinary System Reliability Analysis

NASA/CR—2001-210969

June 2001
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NASA/CR—2001-210969

June 2001

National Aeronautics and

Space Administration

Glenn Research Center

Prepared under Grant NAG3–1372

Sankaran Mahadevan and Song Han

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

Multidisciplinary System Reliability Analysis
Available from

NASA Center for Aerospace Information

7121 Standard Drive

Hanover, MD 21076

National Technical Information Service

5285 Port Royal Road

Springfield, VA 22100

Available electronically at http://gltrs.grc.nasa.gov/GLTRS

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Both names may appear in this report.
NASA/CR—2001-210969 iii

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MULTI-DISCIPLINARY SYSTEM RELIABILITY ANALYSIS

Introduction
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subroutine defines response 
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analys s problem. analysis problem.
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shown in Appendix

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F. The inflow pressure
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therefore,
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which in this case are both 0.492611.
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under
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Structural Anal-
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NASA CR—2001-210969

E–12823

WU–705–30–11–00

NAG3–1372

105

Multidisciplinary System Reliability Analysis

Sankaran Mahadevan and Song Han

Probabilistic analysis code; System reliability analysis; System reliability computation;

Tensile stress; Yield strength; Structure analysis; Thermal-structural fluid system

Unclassified -Unlimited

Subject Category: 05 Distribution: Nonstandard

Vanderbilt University

Civil and Environmental Engineering

2201 W. End Avenue

Nashville, Tennessee 37240–0001

Project Manager, Christos C. Chamis, Research and Technology Directorate, NASA Glenn Research Center,

organization code 5000, 216–433–3252.

The objective of this study is to develop a new methodology for estimating the reliability of engineering systems that

encompass multiple disciplines. The methodology is formulated in the context of the NESSUS probabilistic structural

analysis code, developed under the leadership of NASA Glenn Research Center. The NESSUS code has been successfully applied to the reliability estimation of a variety of structural engineering systems. This study examines whether the

features of NESSUS could be used to investigate the reliability of systems in other disciplines such as heat transfer, fluid

mechanics, electrical circuits etc., without considerable programming effort specific to each discipline. In this study, the

mechanical equivalence between system behavior models in different disciplines are investigated to achieve this objective. A new methodology is presented for the analysis of heat transfer, fluid flow, and electrical circuit problems using the

structural analysis routines within NESSUS, by utilizing the equivalence between the computational quantities in

different disciplines. This technique is integrated with the fast probability integration and system reliability techniques

within the NESSUS code, to successfully compute the system reliability of multidisciplinary systems. Traditional as well

as progressive failure analysis methods for system reliability estimation are demonstrated, through a numerical example

of a heat exchanger system involving failure modes in structural, heat transfer and fluid flow disciplines.