A Reliability Index Based Decoupling Method for Reliability-Based Design Optimization

Abstract

Reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) evaluates variation of output induced by uncertainties of design variables and results in an optimal design while satisfying the reliability requirements. However, its use in practical applications is hindered by the huge computational cost during the evaluation of structure reliability. In this paper, the reliability index based decoupling method is developed to improve the efficiency of probabilistic optimization. The reliability index is used to calculate the shifting vector in the decoupling process, due to its efficiency in evaluating violated probabilistic constraints. The computation capability of the proposed method is demonstrated using two examples, which are widely used to test RBDO methods. The comparison results show that the proposed method has the same accuracy as the existing methods, and it is also very efficient.