A further review of ESO type methods for topology optimization.

Evolutionary Structural Optimization (ESO) andits later version bi-directional ESO (BESO) have gainedwidespread popularity among researchers in structural optimizationand practitioners in engineering and architecture.However, there have also been many critical comments onvarious aspects of ESO/BESO. To address those criticisms,we have carried out extensive work to improve the originalESO/BESO algorithms in recent years. This paper summarizeslatest developments in BESO for stiffness optimizationproblems and compares BESO with other well-establishedoptimization methods. Through a series of numerical examples,this paper provides answers to those critical commentsand shows the validity and effectiveness of the evolutionarystructural optimization method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]