The reliability-based design and optimization procedures for a heavy-duty pallet system

Abstract

Shipping heavy-duty goods or equipment is being a new sector recently, and the pallet is rather important. In this article, a comparison of various materials revealed that laminated veneer lumber was ideal for heavy-duty packaging industry. For various pallets with random parameters, a hybrid reliability optimization design method was proposed, which aimed to provide an effective computational tool for reliability design of pallet system. With first-order second-moment method, the separation and combination of component and system failure probabilities were obtained. Several case studies were included to illustrate the computational procedures, as well as to discuss the effects of dimension and quantity of members. Using design of experiment method, the sensitivities of each parameter were significant, and the optimization of whole system was realized. To reduce the cost, recycling and standardization were worth considering in the future.