Experience with approximate reliability-based optimization methods

Traditional reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) requires a double loop iteration process. The inner optimization loop is to find the most probable point (MPP) and the outer is the regular optimization loop to optimize the RBDO problem with reliability objectives or constraints. It is well known that the computation can be prohibitive when the associated function evaluation is expensive. As a result, many approximate RBDO methods, which convert the double loop to a single loop, have been developed. In this work, several approximate RBDO methods are coded, discussed, and tested against a double loop algorithm through four design problems.