Belief Reliability Analysis Under the Parameter Uncertainty of Performance Margin Using Uncertain Random Simulation

Belief reliability is a reliability metric considering both aleatory and epistemic uncertainty based on probability theory, uncertainty theory and chance theory. Generally, the belief reliability analysis process is conducted through the performance margin model of a system or a component. To model the parameters affected by different types of uncertainty in the margin model, in this paper, we describe them as random variables if they are mainly affected by aleatory uncertainty or uncertain variables if they contain mainly epistemic uncertainty. Based on this, a basic belief reliability model is first proposed according to the operational laws of chance theory. Since it is usually difficult to calculate the belief reliability analytically using this model, we also develop an uncertain random simulation method to cope with this problem based on the geometric properties of uncertainty theory. As an illustration, a case study of belief reliability analysis for an aero-hydraulic spool valve is performed.