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Main Authors: Ha, Dat Quoc, Alam, Md Ferdous, Buehler, Markus J., Ahmed, Faez, Carstensen, Josephine V.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.10859
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author Ha, Dat Quoc
Alam, Md Ferdous
Buehler, Markus J.
Ahmed, Faez
Carstensen, Josephine V.
author_facet Ha, Dat Quoc
Alam, Md Ferdous
Buehler, Markus J.
Ahmed, Faez
Carstensen, Josephine V.
contents Inverse design tools such as Topology Optimization (TO) can achieve new levels of improvement for high-performance engineered structures. However, widespread use is hindered by high computational times and a black-box nature that inhibits user interaction. Human-in-the-loop TO approaches are emerging that integrate human intuition into the design generation process. However, these rely on the time-consuming bottleneck of iterative region selection for design modifications. To reduce the number of iterative trials, this contribution presents an AI co-pilot that uses machine learning to predict the user's preferred regions. The prediction model is configured as an image segmentation task with a U-Net architecture. It is trained on synthetic datasets where human preferences either identify the longest topological member or the most complex structural connection. The model successfully predicts plausible regions for modification and presents them to the user as AI recommendations. The human preference model demonstrates generalization across diverse and non-standard TO problems and exhibits emergent behavior outside the single-region selection training data. Demonstration examples show that the new human-in-the-loop TO approach that integrates the AI co-pilot can improve manufacturability or improve the linear buckling load by 39% while only increasing the total design time by 15 sec compared to conventional simplistic TO.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_10859
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AI-Guided Human-In-the-Loop Inverse Design of High Performance Engineering Structures
Ha, Dat Quoc
Alam, Md Ferdous
Buehler, Markus J.
Ahmed, Faez
Carstensen, Josephine V.
Machine Learning
Inverse design tools such as Topology Optimization (TO) can achieve new levels of improvement for high-performance engineered structures. However, widespread use is hindered by high computational times and a black-box nature that inhibits user interaction. Human-in-the-loop TO approaches are emerging that integrate human intuition into the design generation process. However, these rely on the time-consuming bottleneck of iterative region selection for design modifications. To reduce the number of iterative trials, this contribution presents an AI co-pilot that uses machine learning to predict the user's preferred regions. The prediction model is configured as an image segmentation task with a U-Net architecture. It is trained on synthetic datasets where human preferences either identify the longest topological member or the most complex structural connection. The model successfully predicts plausible regions for modification and presents them to the user as AI recommendations. The human preference model demonstrates generalization across diverse and non-standard TO problems and exhibits emergent behavior outside the single-region selection training data. Demonstration examples show that the new human-in-the-loop TO approach that integrates the AI co-pilot can improve manufacturability or improve the linear buckling load by 39% while only increasing the total design time by 15 sec compared to conventional simplistic TO.
title AI-Guided Human-In-the-Loop Inverse Design of High Performance Engineering Structures
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.10859