How to make Reliability-Based Optimization using FORM?

Dear Friends,

I am trying to write a general code dealing with a structural analysis problem -solving a truss system- to obtain relaibility-based design optimization using FORM analysis.

There are many flow charts to solve such a problem, but I am little confused. I made a deterministic design optimization (DDo), now, I need a new code covering an optimization process. However, I do not know how I can handle with multiple nonlinear constraints? Which function is more suitable for such a process? For DDO, I used fmincon, now I will generate sample data for random variables and I need to calculate relaibility index. One of the constraints is the stress constraints and another one is the target reliability index. I know the FORM equations and have a code for this, but how can I combine the reliability concept with the optimization?

Could you please give me some clues&trick about the functions, process and flowcharts?

Thanks,

Burak

[Mahmoud Mostafa]

Hi Burak. I am doing basically the same task and I am stuck in the same obstacle. I am doing the reliability analysis using monte-carlo though and I started writing a code for the FORM. I would like to get in touch to share some information about the procedure. Thanks.