An optimal engineering design method with failure rate constraints and sensitivity analysis. Application to composite breakwaters

The paper introduces a new approach to composite breakwater design based on minimizing initial/construction costs subject to yearly failure rate bounds for all failure modes, and presents a technique for sensitivity analysis. The solution of the resulting optimization problem becomes complex because the evaluation of failure rates involves one optimization problem per failure mode (FORM), so that a decomposition method is used to solve the problem. In addition, a sensitivity analysis is performed, which makes it possible to determine how the cost and yearly failure rates of the optimal solution are affected by small changes in the input data values. The proposed method is illustrated by its application to the design of a composite wall under breaking and non-breaking wave conditions. The storms are assumed to be stochastic processes characterized by their maximum significant wave heights, their maximum wave heights and the associated zero-up-crossing mean periods.