Dimensional and statistical foundations for accumulated damage models

This paper develops a framework for creating damage accumulation models for engineered wood products by invoking the classical theory of non–dimensionalization. The result is a general class of such models. Both the US and Canadian damage accumulation models are revisited. It is shown how the former may be generalized within that framework while deficiencies are discovered in the latter and overcome. Use of modern Bayesian statistical methods for estimating the parameters in these models is proposed along with an illustrative application of these methods to a ramp load dataset.