Probabilistic Risk Assessment Strategy for Damage-Tolerant Composite Spacecraft Component Structural Design

Incorporating risk-based design as an integral part of spacecraft development is becoming more and more common. Assessment of uncertainties associated with design parameters and environmental aspects such as loading provides increased understanding of the design and its performance. Results of such studies can contribute to mitigating risk through a system-level assessment. Understanding the risk of an event occurring, the probability of its occurrence, and the consequence(s) of its occurrence can lead to robust, reliable designs. An approach to risk-based structural design incorporating damage-tolerance analysis is described. The application of this approach to a candidate Earth-entry vehicle is also described. The emphasis is on describing an approach for establishing damage-tolerant structural response inputs to a system-level probabilistic risk assessment.

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