A revised BESO method for structures with design-dependent gravity loads

The effectiveness and efficiency of the bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization (BESO) method has been demonstrated on the problems of minimizing compliance of structures with f ixed external loads. This paper considers the minimization of the mean compliance of continuum structure subjected to design-dependent gravity loads. Due to the non-monotonous behaviour for this type ofthe optimization problems, the extended BESO method using discrete design variables has difficulty in obtaining convergent solutions for such problems. In this paper, a new BESO method is developed based on the sensitivity number computation utilizing an alternative material interpolation scheme. Several examples are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed method for achieving convergent optimal solutions for structures with design-dependent gravity loads.