EMPIRICAL PROCESS METHODS FOR CLASSICAL FIBER-BUNDLES

This paper studies the limit distribution for the tensile strength of fiber bundles consisting of parallel and continuous fibers under equal load sharing. The mechanical and statistical behavior of the individual fibers is described by rather general load-strain functions containing random parameters which are motivated by experimental observations of material behavior. The problem is cast within the context of function-indexed empirical processes which provides the structure needed to deduce central limit theorems for classical fiber bundles. This setting allows for a variety of new appliations and generalizations, most of which are unobtainable in the limited context of previous studies. Also, these applications provide a nontrivial example for which empirical process methods are required.