Uncertainty Analysis and Sensitivity Analysis for Multidisciplinary Systems Design

The major findings of this research are as follows. (1) Sensitivity analysis method is an effective tool for reducing the impact of epistemic uncertainty. (2) The proposed new reliability sensitivity indexes can easily measure the changes in output uncertainty with respect to those in input uncertainty. (3) The effect of aleatory uncertainty can be primarily measured by the distribution of a performance; and the effect of epistemic uncertainty can be measured by the bounds of the distribution. (4) The unified uncertainty analysis methods for single-disciplinary systems can be extended to the reliability analysis for multidisciplinary systems. (5) All the proposed methods can be ultimately integrated with multidisciplinary design optimization.

One example is that the true contact resistance in the vehicle crashworthiness
design is hard to know; an interval is then used based on the engineers' best
judgment [18]. Another example is in a new design. It is difficult to determine the ...