an efficient optimal analysis approach to reliability-based design optimization of symmetric skeletal structures

The properties of symmetrical structures can cause the optimal analysis of these types of structures to have greater ease, speed, and accuracy. it also saves space for storing large-scale matrices. reducing these computational costs is very useful in structural problems that require frequent analysis of the specific structure. one of the problems that need repeated structural analysis is reliability-based design optimization (rbdo) of structures utilizing meta-heuristic algorithms. this study presents an efficient approach to the optimal analysis of symmetric skeletal structures. with a systematic and programmable procedure, this approach extracts the submatrices whose dimensions are half or less than half of the main structure's stiffness matrix. then, the inverse of the stiffness matrix can be determined by calculating the inverse of submatrices whose dimensions are half or less than half the dimensions of the main structure's stiffness matrix. two symmetric benchmark structures with general loading were investigated to assess the proposed approach to solving the rbdo problem. the proposed approach reduces the dimensions of matrices that must be inverted, and the computational time for solving the rbdo problem using enhanced vibrating particle system (evps) algorithms, compared to the direct method.