CHAOTIC SEARCH METHOD FOR CALCULATION OF RELIABILITY INDEX OF ENGINEERING STRUCTURES

In this paper, a new method for calculation of the reliability index and the test point is developed based on chaotic search. The optimization problem is solved based on the ergodicity and intrinsic randomness of chaos. Numerical results show that the new method is simple and effective. It is a new way to solve reliability problem of nonlinear performance functions. It can deal with problem with abnormal distribution of basic random variables or the correlation between variables.