Risk evaluation in failure mode and effects analysis of aircraft turbine rotor blades using Dempster–Shafer evidence theory under uncertainty

Rotor blades are the major components of an aircraft turbine. Their reliability seriously affects the overall aircraft turbine security. Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), especially, the risk priority order of failure modes, is essential in the design process. The risk priority number (RPN) has been extensively used to determine the risk priority order of failure modes. When multiple experts give different risk evaluations to one failure mode, which may be imprecise and uncertain, the traditional RPN is not a sufficient tool for risk evaluation. In this paper, the modified Dempster–Shafer (D–S) is adopted to aggregate the different evaluation information by considering multiple experts’ evaluation opinions, failure modes and three risk factors respectively. A simplified discernment frame is proposed according to the practical application. Moreover, the mean value of the new RPN is used to determine the risk priority order of multiple failure modes. Finally, this method is used to deal with the risk priority evaluation of the failure modes of rotor blades of an aircraft turbine under multiple sources of different and uncertain evaluation information. The consequence of this method is rational and efficient.