Conjugate finite-step length method for efficient and robust structural reliability analysis

The Conjugate Finite-Step Length\" (CFSL) algorithm is proposed to improve the efficiency and robustness of first order reliability method (FORM) for reliability analysis of highly nonlinear problems. The conjugate FORM-based CFSL is formulated using the adaptive conjugate search direction based on the finite-step size with simple adjusting condition, gradient vector of performance function and previous iterative results including the conjugate gradient vector and converged point. The efficiency and robustness of the CFSL algorithm are compared through several nonlinear mathematical and structural/mechanical examples with the HL-RF and \"Finite-Step-Length\" (FSL) algorithms. Numerical results illustrated that the CFSL algorithm performs better than the HL-RF for both robust and efficient results while the CFLS is as robust as the FSL for structural reliability analysis but is more efficient.