Reliability estimation of optimal viscoelastic composite shells in critical-time calculations

The problem of reliability estimation for optimal viscoelastic composite shells in critical-time calculations is considered. The weight minimization of a viscoelastic composite shell, with constraints on deflections at the critical time, leads to a system deforming unstably, whose deflections grow in time with an increasing rate. A method for estimating the reliability of such shells in calculating the critical time is discussed. This time is regarded as a random variable depending on many, roughly equivalent, factors. An analysis of the reliability is carried out for different values of coefficients of variation, occurring in practice.