Abstract: Aimed at the topology optimization of continuum structures considering the fail-safe principle, for the purpose of overcoming the shortcomings of the topologies obtained by the traditional topology optimization being too sensitive to local damages for the lack of reasonable redundancy components, the fail-safe design is achieved. At first, four concepts are clarified: the structural local failure mode, the structural local failure region, structural failure case, and the pre-estimation distribution of structural failure cases. Secondly, based on the ICM (independent continuous mapping) method, a minimizing structural volume model with structural performance constraints is established for the fail-safe topology optimization problems of continuum structures. While establishing the objective function, minimizing the maximum of structural volumes of all structural failure cases is converted into minimizing the structural volume of the ground structure without failure regions. Therefore, the difficulty of dealing with multi-objective optimization is avoided. While establishing the approximation functions of constraints, mechanical property constraints of all of the structural failure cases are taken into account. The problems with a single load case or multi-load cases can be solved by the presented model. At last, optimization problems with displacement constraints are taken as examples. The optimization model is established and the solution method is also presented. Some examples with displacement constraints under a single load case or multi-load case are presented to verify the validity of this method. The results show that the optimal topologies obtained by this method are more complex and has a greater volume than that obtained by the topology optimization without fail-safe. Namely, optimal topologies have more redundancy, which is the result of considering the fail-safe principle. The proposed research is an important progress for the design of vehicles serving for aviation, aerospace, water or land fields and other engineering structures undergoing accident damages, war wounds or terrorist attacks.