Reliable design space and complete single-loop reliability-based design optimization

Reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) has been intensively studied due to its significance and its conceptual and mathematical complexity. This paper proposes a new method for RBDO on the basis of the concept of reliable design space (RDS), within which any design satisfies the reliability requirements. Therefore, a RBDO problem becomes a simple, deterministic optimization problem constrained by RDS rather than its deterministic feasible space. The RDS is found in this work by using the partial derivatives at the current design point as an approximation of the derivatives at its corresponding most probable point (MPP) on the limit state function. This work completely resolves the double loop in RBDO and turns RBDO into a simple optimization problem. Well-known problems from the literature are selected to illustrate the steps of the approach and for result comparison. Discussions will also be given on the limitation of the proposed method, which is shown to be a common limitation overlooked by the research community on RBDO.