Design optimization for dynamic response of vibration mechanical system with uncertain parameters using convex model

The concept of uncertainty plays an important role in the design of practical mechanical system. The most common methods for solving uncertainty problems are to model the parameters as a random vector. A natural way to handle the randomness is to admit that a given probability density function represents the uncertainty distribution. However, the drawback of this approach is that the probability distribution is difficult to obtain. In this paper, we use the nonprobabilistic convex model to deal with the uncertain parameters in which there is no need for probability density functions. Using the convex model theory, it new method to optimize the dynamic response of mechanical system with uncertain parameters is derived. Because the uncertain parameters can be selected as the optimization parameters, the present method can provide more information about the optimization results than those obtained by the deterministic optimization. The present method is implemented for a torsional vibration system. The numerical results show that the method is effective. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.