Xiii. Probabilistic Failure and Probabilistic Life Prediction

This section involves the application of probabilistic methods to the prediction of failure for materials. Only the most severe and demanding of these types of problems are considered, namely those of creep rupture and fatigue. Most other types of failure problems can be treated without the complications of statistical specification. Before explicitly getting into these “extreme” problems, some vital preliminaries must be developed. These concern not only the advantage but the necessity of using power law forms to achieve generality in some situations, and also concern the most important probability distribution of all for materials applications, the famous Weibull distribution. A brief introduction poses the problems of interest.