D. Thomas Seidl

CE
h-index19
4papers
11citations
Novelty49%
AI Score43

4 Papers

CEJun 3
Full-Field Calibration of Coupled Thermomechanical Material Models at Finite Strain

L. River Spencer, William D. Meador, Adrian Buganza Tepole et al.

Calibrating thermomechanical material models from experiments is challenging because deformation, temperature, and force responses are strongly coupled, while measurements are usually restricted to specimen surfaces. We present a full-field calibration framework for coupled finite-strain thermomechanical material models using boundary displacement, reaction-force data, and temperature. The forward model is formulated as a near-incompressible thermo-hyperelastic problem with thermomechanical coupling derived from a Helmholtz free energy, and the inverse problem is posed as a PDE-constrained optimization problem with weighted observation terms for the available data streams. Reduced gradients are computed with adjoint sensitivities that are obtained by automatic differentiation, enabling gradient-based calibration of nonlinear transient thermomechanical systems. The formulation is first verified on synthetic examples involving uniform thermal preconditioning and localized transient rod contact, where the ground-truth parameters are recovered from full-field measurements and force observations. The same workflow is then applied to experimental thermomechanical data by first calibrating a hyperelastic mechanical baseline from cyclic equibiaxial loading and subsequently identifying thermal expansion and directional shrinkage parameters from surface-temperature and boundary-force histories. The results demonstrate that coupled thermomechanical parameters can be inferred from experimentally accessible surface data without requiring volumetric observations.

CEApr 7
Multiscale topology optimization of compressible and nearly incompressible anisotropic hyperelastic structures using physics-augmented neural networks

Asghar A. Jadoon, Aryan Tyagi, L. River Spencer et al.

Multiscale topology optimization (TO) of hyperelastic materials remains computationally prohibitive due to the repeated solution of microscale boundary value problems. In this work, we present a concurrent multiscale topology optimization framework that overcomes this limitation by leveraging physics-augmented neural networks (PANNs) as surrogate constitutive models. The proposed approach enables the simultaneous optimization of macroscale material distribution and microscale descriptors, within a unified nonlinear finite strain setting. The surrogate models are constructed using input-specific neural networks (ISNNs) that enforce key physical principles directly within the architecture, including convexity and material symmetry through invariant-based representations and structural tensors. This ensures thermodynamic consistency and numerical stability while accurately representing homogenized anisotropic hyperelastic responses. The trained PANNs replace the microscale boundary value problem and provide efficient evaluations of stresses and consistent tangent moduli using analytical first and second derivatives of the neural network, enabling tractable large-scale multiscale optimization. The framework is demonstrated on representative microstructures exhibiting transversely isotropic, cubic anisotropic, and nearly incompressible isotropic behavior. The results show that the proposed method captures complex multiscale interactions and enables physically meaningful spatial tailoring of material properties, while significantly reducing computational cost compared to classical FE$^2$ approaches. These findings establish PANNs as a powerful tool for high-fidelity multiscale topology optimization of nonlinear anisotropic materials.

LGMar 1, 2025
Input Specific Neural Networks

Asghar A. Jadoon, D. Thomas Seidl, Reese E. Jones et al.

The black-box nature of neural networks limits the ability to encode or impose specific structural relationships between inputs and outputs. While various studies have introduced architectures that ensure the network's output adheres to a particular form in relation to certain inputs, the majority of these approaches impose constraints on only a single set of inputs. This paper introduces a novel neural network architecture, termed the Input Specific Neural Network (ISNN), which extends this concept by allowing scalar-valued outputs to be subject to multiple constraints. Specifically, the ISNN can enforce convexity in some inputs, non-decreasing monotonicity combined with convexity with respect to others, and simple non-decreasing monotonicity or arbitrary relationships with additional inputs. The paper presents two distinct ISNN architectures, along with equations for the first and second derivatives of the output with respect to the inputs. These networks are broadly applicable. In this work, we restrict their usage to solving problems in computational mechanics. In particular, we show how they can be effectively applied to fitting data-driven constitutive models. We then embed our trained data-driven constitutive laws into a finite element solver where significant time savings can be achieved by using explicit manual differentiation using the derived equations as opposed to automatic differentiation. We also show how ISNNs can be used to learn structural relationships between inputs and outputs via a binary gating mechanism. Particularly, ISNNs are employed to model an anisotropic free energy potential to get the homogenized macroscopic response in a decoupled multiscale setting, where the network learns whether or not the potential should be modeled as polyconvex, and retains only the relevant layers while using the minimum number of inputs.

LGJul 1, 2025
Physics Augmented Machine Learning Discovery of Composition-Dependent Constitutive Laws for 3D Printed Digital Materials

Steven Yang, Michal Levin, Govinda Anantha Padmanabha et al.

Multi-material 3D printing, particularly through polymer jetting, enables the fabrication of digital materials by mixing distinct photopolymers at the micron scale within a single build to create a composite with tunable mechanical properties. This work presents an integrated experimental and computational investigation into the composition-dependent mechanical behavior of 3D printed digital materials. We experimentally characterize five formulations, combining soft and rigid UV-cured polymers under uniaxial tension and torsion across three strain and twist rates. The results reveal nonlinear and rate-dependent responses that strongly depend on composition. To model this behavior, we develop a physics-augmented neural network (PANN) that combines a partially input convex neural network (pICNN) for learning the composition-dependent hyperelastic strain energy function with a quasi-linear viscoelastic (QLV) formulation for time-dependent response. The pICNN ensures convexity with respect to strain invariants while allowing non-convex dependence on composition. To enhance interpretability, we apply $L_0$ sparsification. For the time-dependent response, we introduce a multilayer perceptron (MLP) to predict viscoelastic relaxation parameters from composition. The proposed model accurately captures the nonlinear, rate-dependent behavior of 3D printed digital materials in both uniaxial tension and torsion, achieving high predictive accuracy for interpolated material compositions. This approach provides a scalable framework for automated, composition-aware constitutive model discovery for multi-material 3D printing.