System RBDO of truss structures considering interval distribution parameters

In this paper, a hybrid uncertain model is applied to system reliability based design optimization (RBDO) of trusses. All random variables are described by random distributions but some key distribution parameters of them which lack information are defined by variation intervals. For system RBDO of trusses, the first order reliability method, as well as monotonicity analysis and the branch and bound method, are utilized to determine the system failure probability; and Improved (mu+lambda) constrained differential evolution (ICDE) is employed for the optimization process. System reliability assessment of several numerical examples and system RBDO of different truss structures are proposed to verify our results. Moreover, the effect of different classes of interval distribution parameters on the optimum weight of the structure and the reliability index are also investigated. The results indicate that the weight of the structure is increased by increasing the uncertainty level. Moreover, it is shown that for a certain random variable, the optimum weight is more increased by the translation interval parameters than the rotation ones.