Enriched self-adjusted performance measure approach for reliability-based design optimization of complex engineering problems

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• Enriched self-adjusted PMA is developed to improve drawbacks of nonlinear engineering RBDO. • A novel merit function is proposed to adjust the modified search direction of ESMV using PMA. • The convergence performances of proposed PMA are illustrated with particular complex engineering aircraft stiffened panel. • Enriched self-adjusted mean value improves the convergence performances of the RBDO-based PMA. For reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) of practical structural/mechanical problems under highly nonlinear constraints, it is an important characteristic of the performance measure approach (PMA) to show robustness and high convergence rate. In this study, self-adjusted mean value is used in the PMA iterative formula to improve the robustness and efficiency of the RBDO-based PMA for nonlinear engineering problems based on dynamic search direction. A novel merit function is applied to adjust the modified search direction in the enriched self-adjusted mean value (ESMV) method, which can control the instability and value of the step size for highly nonlinear probabilistic constraints in RBDO problems. The convergence performance of the enriched self-adjusted PMA is illustrated using four nonlinear engineering problems. In particular, a complex engineering example of aircraft stiffened panel is used to compare the RBDO results of different reliability methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed self-adjusted steepest descent search direction can improve the computational efficiency and robustness of the PMA compared to existing modified reliability methods for nonlinear RBDO problems.