A Statistical Procedure for Predicting the Frequency of Extreme Loads

The magnitude and frequency of extreme loads are essential to an accurate calculation of life when cumulative fatigue damage theories are employed. During field load measurements of limited duration, extreme loads are usually not encountered. The magnitude of extreme loads can be determined by abusive tests but this does not provide any information on their frequency. It has been found that normal operation loads usually conform to one of the many statistical distributions. By plotting normal operation loads on probability paper, the frequency of extreme loads can be estimated.