Time-variant reliability assessment for multiple failure modes and temporal parameters

Multiple failure modes and temporal parameters are usually inherent in the complicated products’ performance, which bring new challenges for conducting time-variant reliability analysis and design. This paper proposes a novel time-variant reliability analysis method for multiple failure modes and temporal parameters based on the combination of the extreme value moment method and improved maximum entropy method. Firstly, a scaling function is established to reduce the integration error of the original maximum entropy method. The improved maximum entropy method can transform an infinite interval to a limited interval for a range of integration. The extreme value moments are then obtained by employing the sparse grid technique and the extreme value theory. Finally, the probability density function (PDF) of responses can be obtained by the combination of the extreme value moment method and the improved maximum entropy method and so the time-variant reliability can be estimated. The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated with two examples.