ABSTRACT
Methods for assessing structural reliability and life prediction have a long history. Structural reliability methods started as simple, modest applications of probability theory (random variables, RVs) to linear structural mechanics and dynamics. Authors that worked in this field in the early days of structural reliability were grafting the existing probability methods to the well-established methods of linear and nonlinear structural mechanics. Once this approach started, the internal logic of probability theory demanded the use of all its apparatus to the problems of linear and nonlinear structural mechanics, which are, by definition, multidegree-of-freedom problems. With time, this approach gained momentum and now has become the mainstream of research and development.
