ABSTRACT
Probabilistic analysis by stochastic models is a useful tool for deteriorating composite materials affected by cyclic fatigue loadings during the service life. The fatigue crack growth of composite blades of offshore wind turbines can be modelled as a stochastic process with uncertainties. Considering the nature of cumulative growth of fatigue cracks, the gamma process model is an appropriate approach for performance deterioration since gamma process has been proved to be more versatile and increasingly used in stochastic deflection and reliability model (Van Noortwijk 2009). Guida and Penta (2015) proved the gamma process analyses the fatigue crack growth data accurately and derived the distribution of the time to reach any crack size.
