Reliability Analysis of a Composite Blade Structure Using the Model Correction Factor Method

This paper presents a reliability analysis of a composite blade profile. The so-called Model Correction Factor technique is applied as an effective alternate approach to the response surface technique. The structural reliability is determined by use of a simplified idealised analytical model which in a probabilistic sense is model corrected so that it, close to the design point, represents the same structural behaviour as a realistic FE model. This approach leads to considerable improvement of computational efficiency over classical response surface methods, because the numerically “cheap” idealistic model is used as the response surface, while the time-consuming detailed model is called only a few times until the simplified model is calibrated to the detailed model.