A Rapid Method for Reliability Analysis of Composite Tophat Stiffened Structures using a First Principles Method and Design Rules

Composite materials are increasingly being used within engineering, especially in low weight applications. A significant drawback that these materials exhibit is their variability. There is a growing trend towards stochastic analysis of marine structures and this is even more important for scenarios that have a high variability. To implement these new techniques it is important to be able to, rapidly and accurately, determine reliability during the design phase. Therefore, a reliability analysis, utilising a rapid implementation, has been performed on plates that have been designed using two different sets of design rules and a first principles method. The results show that whilst, under the limits investigated, the reliability of the design rules are slightly safer than those found using first principles; the sensitivity analysis shows that each of the design rules generates a different reaction from each variable, encouraging different types of structures through their idiosyncrasies. Furthermore the method shown allows a rapid analysis to be performed on complex composite structures in a relatively short time frame using either first principles methods or design rules. NOMENCLATURE