In this article, the ant colony method is utilized for topology optimization of space structures. Strain energy of the structure is minimized while the material volume is limited to a certain amount. In other words, the stiffest possible structure is sought when certain given materials are used. In addition, a noise cleaning technique is addressed to prevent undesirable members in optimum topology. The performance of the method for topology optimization of space structures are demonstrated by three numerical examples.

Keywords: space structure, topology optimization, Ant Colony Algorithm

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