Sensitivity of the probability of failure to probability of detection curve regions

•Sensitivities of probability-of-failure to a region of probability-of-detection curve.•The sensitivities are computed with negligible cost.•Sensitivities identify the important region of a POD curve.•Sensitivities can be used as a guide to selecting the optimal POD curve.

Non-destructive inspection (NDI) techniques have been shown to play a vital role in fracture control plans, structural health monitoring, and ensuring availability and reliability of piping, pressure vessels, mechanical and aerospace equipment. Probabilistic fatigue simulations are often used in order to determine the efficacy of an inspection procedure with the NDI method modeled as a probability of detection (POD) curve. These simulations can be used to determine the most advantageous NDI method for a given application. As an aid to this process, a first order sensitivity method of the probability-of-failure (POF) with respect to regions of the POD curve (lower tail, middle region, right tail) is developed and presented here. The sensitivity method computes the partial derivative of the POF with respect to a change in each region of a POD or multiple POD curves. The sensitivities are computed at no cost by reusing the samples from an existing Monte Carlo (MC) analysis. A numerical example is presented considering single and multiple inspections.