A Single-Loop Reliability-Based MDSDO Formulation for Combined Design and Control Optimization of Stochastic Dynamic Systems

Optimization of dynamic engineering systems requires an integrated approach that accounts for the coupling between embodiment design and control system design, simultaneously. Generally known as combined design and control optimization (co-design), these methods offer superior system’s performance and reduced costs. Despite the widespread use of co-design approaches in the literature, not much work has been done to address the issue of uncertainty in co-design problem formulations. This is problematic as all engineering models contain some level of uncertainty that might negatively affect the system’s performance, if overlooked. While in our previous study we developed a robust co-design approach, a more rigorous evaluation of probabilistic constraints is required to obtain the targeted reliability levels for probabilistic constraints. Therefore, we propose and implement a novel stochastic co-design approach based on the principles of reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) to explicitly account for uncertainties from design decision variables and problem parameters. In particular, a reliability-based, multidisciplinary dynamic system design optimization (RB-MDSDO) formulation is developed using the sequential optimization and reliability assessment (SORA) algorithm, such that the analysis-type dynamic equality constraints are satisfied at the mean values of random variables, as well as their most probable points (MPPs). The proposed approach is then implemented for two case studies, and the results were benchmarked through Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) to indicate the impact of including reliability measures in co-design formulations.