Reliability assessment on different designs of a SMES system based on the reliability index approach

The current paper presents an effective methodology for assessing the reliability of electromagnetic designs when considering uncertainties of design variables. To achieve this goal, the reliability index approach based on the first-order reliability method is adopted to deal with probabilistic constraint functions, which are expressed in terms of random design variables. The proposed method is applied to three different designs of a superconducting magnetic energy storage system that corresponds to initial, deterministic, and roust designs. The validity and efficiency of the method is investigated with reference values obtained from Monte Carlo simulation.