Component reliability exposed to thermal neutron environment—III
Abstract This paper deals with the reliability evaluation of a component when a large number of such identical components are exposed to a thermal neutron environment in such a way that each component receives a nuclear stress rate in a random way represented by Maxwellian distribution. As a result of interaction between the incident thermal neutrons and nuclei of the material of the component, activated nuclei are formed through (n, γ) process. These activated nuclei are assumed to be β−-unstable and decay to form impurity atoms which affect the normal functioning of the component in the form of a permanent damage. The impurity density Ni ≥ Nic is taken to be the failure criterion, which is the same for all the components. The survival probability or the reliability of a component is obtained in terms of error function. The model has been illustrated numerically and graphically.