Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) staff members develop and apply state-of-the-art probabilistic analysis tools to address challenging technology questions. These tools have been used successfully in complex, large-scale engineering applications across a wide variety of commercial sectors and government agencies. Many of these tools are implemented in our reliability and integrity software codes, such as the NESSUS software.
The SwRI staff has extensive experience and expertise with developing accurate and efficient probabilistic analysis techniques for predicting reliability in high-consequence engineering applications. When sufficient data are available, sophisticated and highly accurate statistical models of the inputs are developed and incorporated in the probabilistic analysis. In other cases where only sparse data are available, the staff has developed a novel method to incorporate expert opinion into the probabilistic analysis without introducing biases in the representation of the data using standard probabilistic models.
Capabilities
Statistical quantification of uncertainty
Estimation of extreme events
Time-series analysis
Random field modeling
Folding expert opinion into probabilistic analysis
Optimal decision making with incomplete information
Experience and Applications
Development and implementation of new probabilistic algorithms
Simulation of complex systems
Tailored probabilistic solutions for complex systems
Application in a wide range of sectors (government, automotive, aerospace, …)
Analysis Tools
NESSUS® software development
Integration of existing deterministic software in probabilistic tools
Development of customized routines and tools (FORTRAN, Matlab, …)
Extreme events and their confidence bounds can be estimated on the basis of limited data sets.
SwRI used statistical quantification of the time series in a dynamic analysis
to estimate the probability of fracture of mission-critical components.
Expert opinion introduces epistemic (or model) uncertainty. SwRI engineers have developed a probabilistic approach to incorporate expert opinion in a reliability assessment.
Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®), headquartered
in San Antonio, Texas, is a multidisciplinary, independent, nonprofit, applied
engineering and physical sciences research and development organization with
12
technical divisions.
