Abstract
A reliability analysis and design procedure based on the design of experiment (DOE) is combined with the response surface method (RSM) for numerical efficiency. The procedure established is based on a 3$^n$ full factorial DOE for numerical quadrature using explicit formula of optimum levels and weights derived for general distributions. The full factorial moment method (FFMM) shows good performance in terms of accuracy and ability to treat non-normally distributed random variables. But, the FFMM becomes very inefficient because the number of function evaluation required increases exponentially as the number of random variables considered increases. To enhance the efficiency, the response surface moment method (RSMM) is proposed. In RSMM, experiments only with high probability are conducted and the rest of data are complemented by a quadratic response surface approximation without mixed terms. The response surface is updated by conducting experiments one by one until the value of failure probability is converged. It is calculated using the Pearson system and the four statistical moments obtained from the experimental data. A measure for checking the relative importance of an experimental point is proposed and named as influence index. During the update of response surface, mixed terms can be added into the formulation.
