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：科学仪器的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约束严格的设计空间。这些仿真器为将进化计算集成到科学设计流程中带来了重大挑战。进化计算通常需要进行大量设计评估，这使得与速度慢、吞吐量低的仿真器集成尤为困难，因为后者主要针对精度和易用性进行优化，而非吞吐量。本文提出ECLIPSE，这是一个进化计算框架，旨在直接与复杂的领域专用仿真工具对接，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，采用领域感知、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，并将仿真器输出转化为适应度度量；(3) 进化器模块，实现适用于高成本、有限吞吐量环境的进化计算算法。我们通过多个活跃的空间科学应用案例展示了ECLIPSE的实用性，包括演化的三维天线以及在极低地球轨道中为减阻优化的航天器几何构型。我们进一步探讨了将进化计算与科学仿真流程耦合时遇到的实际挑战，包括互操作性约束、并行化限制以及极高的评估成本，并概述了应对这些挑战的持续努力。ECLIPSE使物理学家、工程师和进化计算研究人员组成的跨学科团队能够协同探索科学硬件的非常规设计，同时充分利用现有的领域专用仿真软件。