Reliability of mechanical structures is a very important issue in the engineering field, especially in the field of aerospace and other high-tech sophisticated fields. Up to now, reliability-based evaluation and optimization methods have been widely applied in the safety analysis and design of mechanical structures. Many advanced algorithms for greatly improving the calculation efficiency and accuracy of solutions have been developed and gained successful applications in real engineering problems. Recently, with the advantages of strong versatility and well global-searching ability, intelligent algorithms for reliability optimization design of mechanical structures have also attracted ever-increasing interest. For the failure of complex mechanical structures under multi-physical coupling field, the reliability optimization method based on intelligent algorithms is applicable to solving design failure problems.

In this special issue, "Novel methods for reliability evaluation and optimization of complex mechanical structures", we thus invite researchers and practitioners to present their original ideas and novel algorithms in the reliability-based evaluation and reliability-based optimization. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
• Reliability Evaluation Index of Complex Mechanical Structures

• Innovation and Improvement of Intelligent Algorithms

• Fault Analysis of Complex Mechanical Structures

• Reliability Evaluation Based on Intelligent Algorithms

• Reliability Optimization Design in Intelligent Algorithms