Structural Safety Evaluation Using Modified Latin Hypercube Sampling Technique

Structural safety and high reliability are most important requirements of aerospace product. Until recently, a design was considered to be robust if all the variables that affected its life had been taken into account and brought under control. So far designers have traditionally handled variability with safety factors. Some safety factors are derived from observation and analysis and in many cases it use to be pure guesswork. In those cases, the bigger the guess, the bigger the risk, the bigger the safety factor resulting in over design which is undesirable in case of aerospace product. In the present paper Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) based quasi random polar sampling technique is suggested for structural safety evaluation. The data generated from LHS are selected quasi-randomly to establish structural load & resistance dispersion and it has been used for safety evaluation. This technique is illustrated with a thin cylindrical pressure vessel, which is used extensively in aerospace applications. The proposed technique found to be simple and this technique will be useful to pressure vessel designer during initial design phase.