Designing scientific instrumentation often requires exploring large, highly constrained design spaces using computationally expensive physics simulations. These simulators pose substantial challenges for integrating evolutionary computation (EC) into scientific design workflows. Evolutionary computation typically requires numerous design evaluations, making the integration of slow, low-throughput simulators particularly challenging, as they are optimized for accuracy and ease of use rather than throughput. We present ECLIPSE, an evolutionary computation framework built to interface directly with complex, domain-specific simulation tools while supporting flexible geometric and parametric representations of scientific hardware. ECLIPSE provides a modular architecture consisting of (1) Individuals, which encode hardware designs using domain-aware, physically constrained representations; (2) Evaluators, which prepare simulation inputs, invoke external simulators, and translate the simulator's outputs into fitness measures; and (3) Evolvers, which implement EC algorithms suitable for high-cost, limited-throughput environments. We demonstrate the utility of ECLIPSE across several active space-science applications, including evolved 3D antennas and spacecraft geometries optimized for drag reduction in very low Earth orbit. We further discuss the practical challenges encountered when coupling EC with scientific simulation workflows, including interoperability constraints, parallelization limits, and extreme evaluation costs, and outline ongoing efforts to combat these challenges. ECLIPSE enables interdisciplinary teams of physicists, engineers, and EC researchers to collaboratively explore unconventional designs for scientific hardware while leveraging existing domain-specific simulation software.

翻译：科学仪器设计通常需要利用计算成本高昂的物理仿真来探索庞大且高度受限的设计空间。这些仿真器为将进化计算（EC）集成到科学设计工作流中带来了重大挑战。进化计算通常需要进行大量设计评估，这使得集成速度慢、吞吐量低的仿真器尤为困难，因为此类仿真器主要针对精度和易用性而非吞吐量进行优化。本文提出ECLIPSE——一个专为直接对接复杂领域专用仿真工具而构建的进化计算框架，同时支持科学硬件灵活几何与参数化表征。ECLIPSE采用模块化架构，包含：（1）个体模块，通过领域感知且受物理约束的表征方式对硬件设计进行编码；（2）评估器模块，负责准备仿真输入、调用外部仿真器并将仿真输出转化为适应度指标；（3）进化器模块，实现适用于高成本、有限吞吐量环境的EC算法。我们通过多个空间科学实际应用案例（包括为极低地球轨道减阻优化的进化三维天线与航天器构型）展示了ECLIPSE的实用性。进一步探讨了将EC与科学仿真工作流耦合时遇到的实际挑战，包括互操作性约束、并行化限制及极端评估成本，并概述了应对这些挑战的持续研究。ECLIPSE使物理学家、工程师与EC研究人员组成的跨学科团队能够协同探索科学硬件的创新设计，同时充分利用现有领域专用仿真软件。