Reliability-Based Design for Hoop Connection of Unmanned Undersea Vehicle under Uncertainty

The basic function of hoop connection is to connect two parts of unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) shell. The hoop connection of UUV is presently designed via the static strength method which might result in more redundancy than being required. However, uncertainties are ubiquitous in any stage of the UUV development. A design optimization method is proposed in this paper by combining Finite Element Method (FEM), Response Surface Methodology (RSM), and First Order Reliability Method (FORM) to facilitate the design of hoop connection under uncertainty. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by an engineering example.