QUANTITATIVE STRUCTURAL DESIGN CRITERIA BY STATISTICAL METHODS. VOLUME III. COMPUTER PROGRAM FORMULATION AND USER'S MANUAL

Exploratory research, needed to develop quantitative structural design criteria for aerospace vehicles, has been conducted to relate the probabilistic nature of design, operational, and environmental experiences to the structural performance of aerospace vehicles. This design criteria is predicted on the concept of structural reliability. Volume I presents a critique of present and proposed approaches to structural design criteria. Volume II presents recommendations for a deterministic structural design criteria procedure based on statistical methods. This is a new procedure intended to overcome the problems associated with other structural design criteria procedures. The new procedure is demonstrated on the F-100 airplane by comparing the output of the computer program with actual service records. Volume III formulates two computer programs for the procedure and presents the user's instructions for the programs. The two computer programs described in Volume III are used to compute structural reliability under static and fatigue conditions, respectively. Distinguishing features of these programs are the inclusion of analytical errors and the means for disclosing and eliminating them, closely corresponding to actual present-day aerospace practice. The fatigue program employs the concept of residual static strength of the fatigue damaged structure to demonstrate its capability to withstand further loading conditions. (Author)