Abstract

The manufacturing process of a multi‐axial load cell requires robust tools to analyze the structural behavior when it is subjected to static and dynamic loads. In this work, it is given focus to the problem of optimizing a multi‐axial load cell model (6 load components) of Lywood type considering concepts of reliability‐based design optimization. The reliability structural analysis problem is handled including the variability effect of geometric and physical properties. The load cell is analyzed by finite element method and the reliability constraint is applied to the strength limit. The objective is the maximization of the first natural frequency and simultaneously reducing the mass and corresponding strains without violating reliability limit set as a limit. Comparisons between the deterministic optimization procedure and the proposed method are presented and it is found that the deterministic optimization points may have a high probability of failure so justifying in this type of problem the reliability‐based optimization. Different values of the safety factor were also tested with the optimization model, and it was possible to analyze, a posteriori, the reliability of the optimization results.