Speed reducer multidisciplinary design optimization based on uncertainty analysis

Generally, multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) is a deterministic design method, which does not takes uncertainty into account. However, uncertainty cannot be ignored since it has a significant influence on the design results of the engineering system. In this paper, in order to reduce the effect of uncertainty on system performance, First-Order Second-Moment based collaborative optimization (FOSM-CO), is proposed, where reliability index is used to evaluate the probability of successful operation. The proposed method is employed to conduct speed reducer design and the global optimal solution is obtained, which illustrates the feasibility of the proposed method.