“…There are variant timevarying uncertainties in complex mechanical systems, such as performance degradation of electronic component, strength decrease, material aging, wear, oxidation, and corrosion. 14,15 Although research methods to deal with aleatory and epistemic uncertainties in MDO may largely improve the reliability of complex systems, however, these research methods cannot accurately describe the sources, essential characteristics, and propagation properties of time-varying uncertainties and School of Mechatronics Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, P.R. China cannot simply be applied to deal with time-varying uncertainties in MDO.…”