In this paper, we present a framework for multiscale topology optimization of fluid-flow devices. The objective is to minimize dissipated power, subject to a desired contact-area. The proposed strategy is to design optimal microstructures in individual finite element cells, while simultaneously optimizing the overall fluid flow. In particular, parameterized super-shapes are chosen here to represent microstructures since they exhibit a wide range of permeability and contact area. To avoid repeated homogenization, a finite set of these super-shapes are analyzed a priori, and a variational autoencoder (VAE) is trained on their fluid constitutive properties (permeability), contact area and shape parameters. The resulting differentiable latent space is integrated with a coordinate neural network to carry out a global multi-scale fluid flow optimization. The latent space enables the use of new microstructures that were not present in the original data-set. The proposed method is illustrated using numerous examples in 2D
Overview of the proposed method: A dataset of shape parameters of super-shapes, contact areas, and homogenized permeability tensors is used to train a variational autoencoder (VAE). The resulting latent space is then used for global multiscale optimization of fluid flow.