Multi-scale finite element based time-dependent reliability analysis for laminated fibre reinforced composites.

The objective of this paper is to propose a time-dependent reliability analysis method to investigate the durabil- ity of fibre reinforced polymer composites. A stochastic multi-scale finite element method, which is based on computational homogenization and perturbation technique, is adopted to propagate uncertainties in both micro- and macro-scale parameters. The influence of water absorption and heat conduction and the induced degradation of mechanical properties, which is estimated through a hygro-thermo-mechanical model that is integrated into the stochastic multi-scale finite method, is then studied in the framework of time-variant reliability analysis. It is shown that the problem reduces to a sequence of time-independent problems that can be solved using the first-order reliability method. A numerical study is carried out to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method, and the evolution in time of the probability of failure is computed.