Inverse Design of Cellular Composites for Targeted Nonlinear Mechanical Response via Multi-Fidelity Bayesian Optimisation

Abstract

The rise of machine learning and additive manufacturing has enabled the design of architected materials with tailored properties that surpass those of natural materials. Inverse design offers a data-efficient alternative to trial-and-error methods, yet most existing approaches depend on either large datasets or scarce high-fidelity data from simulations and experiments. These requirements pose a particular challenge for architected materials with nonlinear mechanical responses, where capturing complex deformation modes requires expensive evaluations. To address this, a Multi-Fidelity Bayesian Optimisation (MFBO) framework for the inverse design of cellular composites that directly targets their full nonlinear response is introduced. By integrating information from multiple fidelity sources and scalarising the response using a similarity score, the framework enables efficient exploration of the design space while reducing reliance on costly evaluations. As a proof of concept, the method is applied to spinodoid cellular composites using finite element models, validated with compression tests on short carbon-fibre reinforced PET-G composites. Four target responses were considered, with three multi-fidelity strategies benchmarked against a standard single-fidelity approach. Across all cases, MFBO achieved higher similarity scores and consistently recovered the targeted responses, outperforming the single-fidelity baseline under the same evaluation budget, while also successfully recovering all targeted responses. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of MFBO for inverse design of stochastic architected materials, where high-quality data is scarce but lower-cost proxies exist. By efficiently navigating complex design spaces, MFBO enables the creation of cellular composites with precisely tailored nonlinear mechanical behaviour.