Abstract
Evolutionary Structural Optimization (ESO) method is one of the most powerful and promising techniques for pursuing the optimal structural form. Although it is easy to carry out the calculation of ESO, there have been remained some weak points in its evolutionary process by which inefficiency of calculation is caused or unreasonable solutions are generated. A new method through the usage of the contour lines of the characteristic parameters. which is named Extended ESO method, in order to remove such defects of usual ESO as well as to enable the structures to not only be scraped but also grow up toward the final optimal structures. In this paper, extension for 3-dimensional structures of the Extended ESO method is proposed and the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is shown through some numerical examples.
