Abstract:After the production of a typical vessel used to store test,many cracks in the welding seam have been observed. According to probabilistic fracture mechanics,the reliability of the pressure vessel is given by R=1-∫+∞-∞?(a)da∫a0Φ(ac)dac Our analysis of data from 165 samples has shown that the fracture toughness Kcobeys the normal distribution and the second type of exponential distribution for the crack sizes is better applicable to fit the data of crack sizes in a welding seam. The reliability is calculated by using Monte Carlo method.