Risk Assuring Future Structure Critical Systems: Combining 21st Century Science with Engineering Intuition - Renewal

当你阅读这篇文章时，你可能正在坐下来。当你坐下来的时候，你担心椅子会坏掉吗？你甚至可能没有考虑过它，因为你可能在这张椅子上坐了几百次，如果不是几千次的话。你使用了你的经验知识，这把椅子对你来说是安全的。如果这对你来说是一把新椅子呢？如果这把椅子是全新的，你会感到欣慰的是，这把椅子是按照标准制造的，并受到一定程度的质量控制。如果椅子属于一个组织，那么你会期望该组织在椅子出现故障时承担责任，如果另一个用户报告，该组织将会更换椅子。椅子的故障很少是由于糟糕的设计。假设椅子经过正确制造，它将能够承受任何预期的载荷；然而，它所用的材料本身是可变的，并且包含在制造检查时并不总是明显的缺陷。材料变化的程度可能很小，并了解缺陷的大小，但通常不考虑确保设计在整个生命周期内考虑到这种变化(特别是当椅子受到不当处理时)。在某种程度上，我们都是材料工程师，当我们在坐下来之前判断椅子看起来“坚固”时，但我们这样做是基于我们的经验知识，而不是我们可以获得的科学。你确定下一次你坐在椅子上它不会失败吗？你的经验知识只会告诉你上次发生了什么，而不是未来会发生什么。材料科学知识的应用将为未来的表现提供信息。弥合材料科学的原子论世界和材料工程中考虑变异性和缺陷的边界估计之间的差距，这是提高将材料科学应用于工程结构的信任的关键。保证是关于我们对质量体系没有失败的信任。椅子在出厂前可能经过了一定程度的质量控制，在这个阶段我们需要信任制造商。如果椅子属于个人或组织，我们相信作为负责任的所有者，如果椅子坏了，他们会更换椅子，并且他们有适当的系统，在有人坐上椅子之前检查椅子是否坏了。这种团契是为了为未来的高度诚信或关键应用发展类似级别的信任。我们不能使用经验性知识，即我们在建造聚变反应堆或生产用于航空航天应用的高完整性电力传输系统方面没有数千年的经验，所以我们必须使用科学。在材料科学应用于这些复杂和高价值系统的预测建模能力中发展类似水平的信任，以及我们所有人对我们常用椅子的经验知识，是释放公众对未来关键系统安全性能的信任的关键。

As you read this you are probably sitting down. When you sat down, were you concerned that the chair would fail? You likely did not even consider it as you may have sat in this same chair hundreds, if not thousands of times before. You used your empirical knowledge that this chair is safe for you to sit in. What if this was a new chair to you? If the chair was brand new, you would take comfort in the fact that the chair has been manufactured to a standard and been subject to some level of quality control. If the chair belongs to an organisation then you would expect that organisation to take responsibility if the chair failed and would have been replaced if reported by another user.Failure of the chair will, very rarely, be due to a poor design. The chair will be able to withstand any expected loads assuming that it has been manufactured correctly; however, the material that it is made from will be inherently variable and contain defects that are not always apparent at the point of a manufacturing inspection. The degree of that material variability may be slight and the defect sizing understood, but making sure that the design takes account of this variability through life (especially when the chair is mistreated) is often not considered. To some extent we are all materials engineers when we make a judgement that the chair appears to be 'sturdy' before we sit down, but we do this based on our empirical knowledge and not on the science that is available to us. Are you sure the next time you sit in the chair it won't fail? Your empirical knowledge only informs you of what happened last time not what 'will' happen in the future. The application of materials science knowledge will inform the future performance. Bridging the gap between the atomistic world of materials science that defines the best estimate of mechanical performance and the bounding estimates required in materials engineering that takes account of the variability and defects is key to improving trust in applying materials science to engineering structures.Assurance is about the trust that we place that the quality system has not failed. The chair may have been subject to a level of quality control before it left the factory, at this stage we need to have trust in the manufacturer. If the chair belongs to an individual or organisation, we trust that as responsible owners, that they would replace the chair if broken and that they have systems in place to check if the chair is broken before someone sits on it.This fellowship is about developing a similar level of trust for future high integrity or critical applications. We cannot use empirical knowledge, i.e. we don't have thousands of years of experience with building fusion reactors or producing high integrity power transmission systems for aerospace applications, so we must use science. Developing a similar level of trust in the predictive modelling capability in the application of materials science to these complex and high value systems, to the empirical knowledge we all have of our usual chair is key to unlocking the public trust in the safe performance of future critical systems.