Form finding algorithm inspired by ant’s foraging behavior

This paper presents an effective method for designing structures using cellular automata, representing a simple conceptual basis for the self-organization of structural systems. The method is sufficiently simple to solve topology optimization problems as pure 0-1 problems, and yet sufficiently complex to express a wide variety of complicated topologies. A local rule about birth and death of cells, that is a new idea from pheromonepsilas properties of ants, is introduced in order to search for solutions. The effectiveness of the present method is demonstrated through numerical examples of the typical topology optimization problem.