Non Deterministic Approaches

Roberto d'Ippolito was born in Naples (Italy) in 1974. He attended the University of Naples "Federico II" while working for different IT companies and graduated in 2003 as aerospace engineer (M.Sc.) with a degree of 107/110 (italian system).

The M.Sc. thesis work was based on the application of the probabilistic structural analysis method (PSAM) on a finite element (FE) model of a composite wing for a high altitude, long endurance plane (HALE). The analysis was carried using a Design of Experiments (DOE) approach in conjunction with Response Surface Modeling (RSM). In the analysis, various input random variables were defined and the reliability of the structure in terms of its probability of failure was assessed through a Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS). A design sensitivity analysis was also performed. The most important achievements and conclusions obtained were: possibility of lighter composite structures design with the same reliability of heavier ones; possibility of a drastic reduction in design conservatism, optimizing production and manufacturing costs; sensitivity analysis of input variables to identify those that more influence the failure probability.