Additive manufacturing is advantageous for producing lightweight components while addressing complex design requirements. This capability has been bolstered by the introduction of unit lattice cells and the gradation of those cells. In cases where loading varies throughout a part, it may be beneficial to use multiple, distinct lattice cell types, resulting in multi-lattice structures. In such structures, abrupt transitions between unit cell topologies may cause stress concentrations, making the boundary between unit cell types a primary failure point. Thus, these regions require careful design in order to ensure the overall functionality of the part. Although computational design approaches have been proposed, smooth transition regions are still difficult to achieve, especially between lattices of drastically different topologies. This work demonstrates and assesses a method for using variational autoencoders to automate the creation of transitional lattice cells, examining the factors that contribute to smooth transitions. Through computational experimentation, it was found that the smoothness of transition regions was strongly predicted by how closely the endpoints were in the latent space, whereas the number of transition intervals was not a sole predictor.

翻译：增材制造在满足复杂设计需求的同时，有利于生产轻量化部件。这一能力因单位晶格单元及其梯度单元的引入而得到加强。当部件不同区域载荷分布不均时，采用多种不同类型的晶格单元形成多晶格结构可能更有利。在此类结构中，单胞构型之间的突变可能导致应力集中，使单胞类型的边界成为主要失效点。因此，为确保部件整体功能，这些区域需要精心设计。尽管已有计算设计方法提出，但实现平滑过渡区域仍具挑战性，尤其是在拓扑结构差异显著的晶格之间。本研究展示并评估了一种利用变分自编码器自动生成过渡晶格单元的方法，重点考察影响过渡平滑性的因素。通过计算实验发现，潜在空间中端点间的距离能强有力地预测过渡区域的平滑度，而过渡间隔的数量并非唯一预测指标。