An evolutionary approach for simultaneous optimization of material property distribution and topology of FG structures

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce an evolutionary heuristic method for simultaneous optimization of topology and material property distribution of functionally graded (FG) structures under a prescribed loading condition. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed procedure is inspired by heuristic nature of bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization (BESO) and genetic algorithm (GA). The optimization algorithm is...