Redundancy Optimization of Finite-Dimensional Structures: A Concept and a Derivative-Free Algorithm

Abstract: Redundancy is related to the amount of functionality that the structure can sustain in the worst-case scenario of structural degradation. This paper proposes a widely-applicable concept of redundancy optimization of finite-dimensional structures. The concept is consistent with the robust structural optimization, as well as the quantitative measure of structural redundancy based on the information-gap theory. A derivative-free algorithm is proposed based on the sequential quadratic programming (SQP) method, where we use the finite-difference method with adaptively varying the difference increment. Preliminary numerical experiments show that an optimal solution of the redundancy optimization problem possibly has multiple worst-case scenarios.