Efficient optimum safety factor approach for system reliability-based design optimization with application to composite yarns

Introduction. The integration of reliability and optimization concepts seeks to design structures that should be both economic and reliable. This model is called Reliability-Based Design Optimization (RBDO). In fact, the coupling between the mechanical modelling, the reliability analyses and the optimization methods leads to very high computational cost and weak convergence stability. Materials andMethods. Several methods have been developed to overcome these difficulties. The methods called Reliability Index Approach (RIA) and Performance Measure Approach (PMA) are two alternative methods. RIA describes the probabilistic constraint as a reliability index while PMA was proposed by converting the probability measure to a performance measure. An Optimum Safety Factor (OSF) method is proposed to compute safety factors satisfying a required reliability level without demanding additional computing cost for the reliability evaluation. The OSF equations are formulated considering RIA and PMA and extended to multiple failure case.Research Results...