Reliability-based design optimization using convex linearization and sequential optimization and reliability assessment method

In this study, an effective method for reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) is proposed enhancing sequential optimization and reliability assessment (SORA) method by convex linearization. In SORA, reliability estimation and deterministic optimization are performed sequentially. And the sensitivity and function value of probabilistic constraint at the most probable point (MPP) are obtained in the process of finding reliability information. In this study, the convex linearization is constructed by utilizing the sensitivity and function value of the probabilistic constraint at the MPP. So no additional evaluation of the probabilistic constraint is required in the deterministic optimization in SORA. The proposed RBDO method is applied to numerical examples and compared to various RBDO methods. It is shown that the proposed method is very efficient with similar accuracy. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.