An Efficient Integrated Framework of Reliability-Based Robust Design Optimization for Computation-Intensive Structures

When carrying out robust design optimization for complex engineering structures, they are computed by finite element software and are always computation-intensive. Aim at this problem, the paper proposes an efficient integrated framework of Reliability-based Robust Design Optimization (RBRDO). Firstly, the conventional RBRDO problem is changed as percentile form, that is, the improved percentile formulation of computing the objective robustness and probabilistic constraints is presented by resorting to the employment of Performance Measure Approach (PMA). Secondly, the above improved RBRDO problem is simplified by a series of new approximation methods due to the need of reducing computation. An efficient approximation method is proposed to estimate PMA functions of the RBRDO formulation. Based on it, the above improved RBRDO problem can be transformed into a sequence of approximate deterministic sub-optimization problems, whose objective function and constraints are expressed as the approximate explicit form only in relation to the design variables. Furthermore, use the trust region method to solve the above sequence of sub-optimization. Lastly, several examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.