Reliability-based optimization - A proposed analytical-experimental study

An analytical and experimental study for assessing the potential of reliability-based structural optimization is proposed and described. Competing designs obtained by deterministic and reliability-based optimization are compared. The experimental portion of the study is practical because the structure selected is a modular, actively and passively controlled truss that consists of many identical members, and because the competing designs are compared in terms of their dynamic performance and are not destroyed if failure occurs. The analytical portion of this study is illustrated on a 10-bar truss example. In the illustrative example, it is shown that reliability-based optimization can yield a design that is superior to an alternate design obtained by deterministic optimization. These analytical results provide motivation for the proposed analytical-experimental study, which is described elsewhere.