In structural designs considering thermal loading, in addition to heat conduction within the structure, the heat convection upon the structure's surface can significantly influence optimal design configurations. in this paper, we focus on the influence of design-dependent effects upon heat convection and internal heat generation for optimal designs developed using a topology optimization scheme. The method for extracting the structural boundaries for heat convection loads is constructed using a Hat function, and heat convection shape dependencies are taken into account in the heat transfer coefficient using a surrogate model. Several numerical examples are presented to confirm the usefulness of the proposed method. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.