Abstract
This paper presents and effective method for designing structures using a cellular automaton and a neuron model, representing a simple conceptual basis for the self-organization of structural systems. The proposed methods are sufficiently simple to solve topology optimization problems as pure 0-1 problems, and yet sufficiently complex to express a wide variety of complicated topologies. Local rules for the birth and death of cells are all that is required for this method, dependent on the type of design constraints, such as weight, stiffness and frequency. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through numerical topology optimization problem examples. The method proposed in this paper offers a new approach to structural optimization, overcoming most of the problems associated with traditional techniques.
