An improved soft kill option(SKO) method is proposed to achieve the optimization design of tower crane boom. For a better optimization performance, a parabolic weight coefficient is suggested and the displacement constraint is taken into consideration. In order to eliminate the numerical instability phenomena like checkerboard and mesh dependence, element temperature filter function is added into SKO method. Through the optimization data comparison of rectangular cantilever plate, it is verified that the improved SKO method can achieve a better result with more uniform stress and higher efficiency. Based on the dimension and load parameters of QTZ63 tower crane boom, an optimization model is established, and a periodic SKO method is put forward to optimize this model. The optimization result of the crane boom can provide a new thought for tower crane boom design. An improved soft kill option (SKO) method is proposed to achieve the optimization design of tower crane boom. For a better optimization performance, a parabolic weight coefficient is suggested and the displacement constraint is taken into consideration. In order to eliminate the numerical instability phenomena like checkerboard and mesh dependence, element temperature filter function is added into SKO method. Through the optimization data comparison of rectangular cantilever plate, it is verified that the improved SKO method can achieve a better result with more uniform stress and higher efficiency. Based on the the dimension and load parameters of QTZ63 tower crane boom, an optimization model is established, and a periodic SKO method is put forward to optimize this model. The optimization result of the crane boom can provide a new thought for tower crane boom design.