Joseph B. Choi

Phong C. H. Nguyen, Joseph B. Choi, H. S. Udaykumar et al.

Many mechanical engineering applications call for multiscale computational modeling and simulation. However, solving for complex multiscale systems remains computationally onerous due to the high dimensionality of the solution space. Recently, machine learning (ML) has emerged as a promising solution that can either serve as a surrogate for, accelerate or augment traditional numerical methods. Pioneering work has demonstrated that ML provides solutions to governing systems of equations with comparable accuracy to those obtained using direct numerical methods, but with significantly faster computational speed. These high-speed, high-fidelity estimations can facilitate the solving of complex multiscale systems by providing a better initial solution to traditional solvers. This paper provides a perspective on the opportunities and challenges of using ML for complex multiscale modeling and simulation. We first outline the current state-of-the-art ML approaches for simulating multiscale systems and highlight some of the landmark developments. Next, we discuss current challenges for ML in multiscale computational modeling, such as the data and discretization dependence, interpretability, and data sharing and collaborative platform development. Finally, we suggest several potential research directions for the future.

Joseph B. Choi, Phong C. H. Nguyen, Oishik Sen et al.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly emerging as an enabling tool for solving various complex materials design problems. This paper aims to review recent advances in AI-driven materials-by-design and their applications to energetic materials (EM). Trained with data from numerical simulations and/or physical experiments, AI models can assimilate trends and patterns within the design parameter space, identify optimal material designs (micro-morphologies, combinations of materials in composites, etc.), and point to designs with superior/targeted property and performance metrics. We review approaches focusing on such capabilities with respect to the three main stages of materials-by-design, namely representation learning of microstructure morphology (i.e., shape descriptors), structure-property-performance (S-P-P) linkage estimation, and optimization/design exploration. We provide a perspective view of these methods in terms of their potential, practicality, and efficacy towards the realization of materials-by-design. Specifically, methods in the literature are evaluated in terms of their capacity to learn from a small/limited number of data, computational complexity, generalizability/scalability to other material species and operating conditions, interpretability of the model predictions, and the burden of supervision/data annotation. Finally, we suggest a few promising future research directions for EM materials-by-design, such as meta-learning, active learning, Bayesian learning, and semi-/weakly-supervised learning, to bridge the gap between machine learning research and EM research.

Phong C. H. Nguyen, Yen-Thi Nguyen, Pradeep K. Seshadri et al.

Predictive simulations of the shock-to-detonation transition (SDT) in heterogeneous energetic materials (EM) are vital to the design and control of their energy release and sensitivity. Due to the complexity of the thermo-mechanics of EM during the SDT, both macro-scale response and sub-grid mesoscale energy localization must be captured accurately. This work proposes an efficient and accurate multiscale framework for SDT simulations of EM. We introduce a new approach for SDT simulation by using deep learning to model the mesoscale energy localization of shock-initiated EM microstructures. The proposed multiscale modeling framework is divided into two stages. First, a physics-aware recurrent convolutional neural network (PARC) is used to model the mesoscale energy localization of shock-initiated heterogeneous EM microstructures. PARC is trained using direct numerical simulations (DNS) of hotspot ignition and growth within microstructures of pressed HMX material subjected to different input shock strengths. After training, PARC is employed to supply hotspot ignition and growth rates for macroscale SDT simulations. We show that PARC can play the role of a surrogate model in a multiscale simulation framework, while drastically reducing the computation cost and providing improved representations of the sub-grid physics. The proposed multiscale modeling approach will provide a new tool for material scientists in designing high-performance and safer energetic materials.

Phong C. H. Nguyen, Yen-Thi Nguyen, Joseph B. Choi et al.

The thermo-mechanical response of shock-initiated energetic materials (EM) is highly influenced by their microstructures, presenting an opportunity to engineer EM microstructure in a "materials-by-design" framework. However, the current design practice is limited, as a large ensemble of simulations is required to construct the complex EM structure-property-performance linkages. We present the Physics-Aware Recurrent Convolutional (PARC) Neural Network, a deep-learning algorithm capable of learning the mesoscale thermo-mechanics of EM from a modest number of high-resolution direct numerical simulations (DNS). Validation results demonstrated that PARC could predict the themo-mechanical response of shocked EM with a comparable accuracy to DNS but with notably less computation time. The physics awareness of PARC enhances its modeling capabilities and generalizability, especially when challenged in unseen prediction scenarios. We also demonstrate that visualizing the artificial neurons at PARC can shed light on important aspects of EM thermos-mechanics and provide an additional lens for conceptualizing EM.

Phong C. H. Nguyen, Joseph B. Choi, Quang-Trung Luu

Many applications in computational and experimental fluid mechanics require effective methods for reconstructing the flow fields from limited sensor data. However, this task remains a significant challenge because the measurement operator, which provides the punctual sensor measurement for a given state of the flow field, is often ill-conditioned and non-invertible. This issue impedes the feasibility of identifying the forward map, theoretically the inverse of the measurement operator, for field reconstruction purposes. While data-driven methods are available, their generalizability across different flow conditions (\textit{e.g.,} different Reynold numbers) remains questioned. Moreover, they frequently face the problem of spectral bias, which leads to smooth and blurry reconstructed fields, thereby decreasing the accuracy of reconstruction. We introduce FLRNet, a deep learning method for flow field reconstruction from sparse sensor measurements. FLRNet employs an variational autoencoder with Fourier feature layers and incorporates an extra perceptual loss term during training to learn a rich, low-dimensional latent representation of the flow field. The learned latent representation is then correlated to the sensor measurement using a fully connected (dense) network. We validated the reconstruction capability and the generalizability of FLRNet under various fluid flow conditions and sensor configurations, including different sensor counts and sensor layouts. Numerical experiments show that in all tested scenarios, FLRNet consistently outperformed other baselines, delivering the most accurate reconstructed flow field and being the most robust to noise.

Shahab Azarfar, Joseph B. Choi, Phong CH. Nguyen et al.

Coupling of physics across length and time scales plays an important role in the response of microstructured materials to external loads. In a multi-scale framework, unresolved (subgrid) meso-scale dynamics is upscaled to the homogenized (macro-scale) representation of the heterogeneous material through closure models. Deep learning models trained using meso-scale simulation data are now a popular route to assimilate such closure laws. However, meso-scale simulations are computationally taxing, posing practical challenges in training deep learning-based surrogate models from scratch. In this work, we investigate an alternative meta-learning approach motivated by the idea of tokenization in natural language processing. We show that one can learn a reduced representation of the micro-scale physics to accelerate the meso-scale learning process by tokenizing the meso-scale evolution of the physical fields involved in an archetypal, albeit complex, reactive dynamics problem, \textit{viz.}, shock-induced energy localization in a porous energetic material. A probabilistic latent representation of \textit{micro}-scale dynamics is learned as building blocks for \textit{meso}-scale dynamics. The \textit{meso-}scale latent dynamics model learns the correlation between neighboring building blocks by training over a small dataset of meso-scale simulations. We compare the performance of our model with a physics-aware recurrent convolutional neural network (PARC) trained only on the full meso-scale dataset. We demonstrate that our model can outperform PARC with scarce meso-scale data. The proposed approach accelerates the development of closure models by leveraging inexpensive micro-scale simulations and fast training over a small meso-scale dataset, and can be applied to a range of multi-scale modeling problems.

Sehyun Chun, Sidhartha Roy, Yen Thi Nguyen et al.

The sensitivity of heterogeneous energetic (HE) materials (propellants, explosives, and pyrotechnics) is critically dependent on their microstructure. Initiation of chemical reactions occurs at hot spots due to energy localization at sites of porosities and other defects. Emerging multi-scale predictive models of HE response to loads account for the physics at the meso-scale, i.e. at the scale of statistically representative clusters of particles and other features in the microstructure. Meso-scale physics is infused in machine-learned closure models informed by resolved meso-scale simulations. Since microstructures are stochastic, ensembles of meso-scale simulations are required to quantify hot spot ignition and growth and to develop models for microstructure-dependent energy deposition rates. We propose utilizing generative adversarial networks (GAN) to spawn ensembles of synthetic heterogeneous energetic material microstructures. The method generates qualitatively and quantitatively realistic microstructures by learning from images of HE microstructures. We show that the proposed GAN method also permits the generation of new morphologies, where the porosity distribution can be controlled and spatially manipulated. Such control paves the way for the design of novel microstructures to engineer HE materials for targeted performance in a materials-by-design framework.

Sehyun Chun, Nima Hamidi Ghalehjegh, Joseph B. Choi et al.

A new convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture for 2D driver/passenger pose estimation and seat belt detection is proposed in this paper. The new architecture is more nimble and thus more suitable for in-vehicle monitoring tasks compared to other generic pose estimation algorithms. The new architecture, named NADS-Net, utilizes the feature pyramid network (FPN) backbone with multiple detection heads to achieve the optimal performance for driver/passenger state detection tasks. The new architecture is validated on a new data set containing video clips of 100 drivers in 50 driving sessions that are collected for this study. The detection performance is analyzed under different demographic, appearance, and illumination conditions. The results presented in this paper may provide meaningful insights for the autonomous driving research community and automotive industry for future algorithm development and data collection.