Reliability-based design optimization using efficient global reliability analysis

Finding the optimal (lightest, least expensive, etc.) design for an engineered component that meets or exceeds a specified level of reliability is a problem of obvious interest across a wide spectrum of engineering fields. Various methods for this reliability-based design optimization problem have been proposed. Unfortunately, this problem is rarely solved in practice because, regardless of the method used, solving the problem is too expensive or the final solution is too inaccurate to ensure that the reliability constraint is actually satisfied. This is especially true for engineering applications involving expensive, implicit, and possibly nonlinear performance functions (such as large finite element models). The Efficient Global Reliability Analysis method was recently introduced to improve both the accuracy and efficiency of reliability analysis for this type of performance function. This paper explores how this new reliability analysis method can be used in a design optimiza-tion context to create a method of sufficient accuracy and efficiency to enable the use of reliability-based design optimization as a practical design tool. I