Smooth Like Butter: Evaluating Multi-lattice Transitions in Property-Augmented Latent Spaces

Additive manufacturing has revolutionized structural optimization by enhancing component strength and reducing material requirements. One approach used to achieve these improvements is the application of multi-lattice structures, where the macroscale performance relies on the detailed design of mesostructural lattice elements. Many current approaches to designing such structures use data-driven design to generate multi-lattice transition regions, making use of machine learning models that are informed solely by the geometry of the mesostructures. However, it remains unclear if the integration of mechanical properties into the dataset used to train such machine learning models would be beneficial beyond using geometric data alone. To address this issue, this work implements and evaluates a hybrid geometry/property variational autoencoder (VAE) for generating multi-lattice transition regions. In our study, we found that hybrid VAEs demonstrate enhanced performance in maintaining stiffness continuity through transition regions, indicating their suitability for design tasks requiring smooth mechanical properties.