Time-variant reliability analysis of mechatronic product based on PSO and Up-crossing rate approach

Time-variant is the typical characteristic of components and systems and the classical approach for time-variant reliability analysis relies on the computation of up-crossing rates. In order to get the up-crossing rate, the common up-crossing approach uses a FORM method to compute the instantaneous reliability index at each time. FORM method likely lead to decrease of the result´s accuracy when the limit state function is strong nonlinear. In this paper, a new approach combined PSO with up-crossing approach is proposed to solve this problem and the instantaneous reliability index is computed by PSO. Then a numerical case is carried out to compare this method with up-crossing approach and Monte-Carlo simulation, and the results show that the new approach appears more accurate.