Model-Free Data-Driven Computing

ABSTRACT

We develop a new computing paradigm, which we refer to as Data-Driven Computing, according to which calculations are carried out directly from experimental material data and pertinent kinematic constraints and conservation laws, such as compatibility and equilibrium, thus bypassing the empirical material modeling step of conventional computing altogether. Data-driven solvers seek to assign to each material point the state from a prespecified data set that is closest to satisfying the conservation laws. Equivalently, data-driven solvers aim to find the state satisfying the conservation laws that is closest to the data set. The resulting data-driven problem thus consists of the minimization of a distance function to the data set in phase space subject to constraints introduced by the conservation laws. We demonstrate the data-driven paradigm and investigate the performance of data-driven solvers by means of several examples of application, including statics and dynamics of nonlinear three-dimensional trusses, and linear and nonlinear elasticity. In these tests, the data-driven solvers exhibit good convergence properties both with respect to the number of data points and with regard to local data assignment, including noisy material data sets containing outliers. The variational structure of the data-driven problem also renders it amenable to analysis. We find that the classical solutions are recovered in the case of linear elasticity. We identify conditions for convergence of Data-Driven solutions corresponding to sequences of approximating material data sets. Specialization to constant material data set sequences in turn establishes an appropriate notion of relaxation. We find that relaxation within the Data-Driven framework is fundamentally different from the classical relaxation of energy functions. For instance, we show that in the Data-Driven framework the relaxation of a bistable material leads to effective material data sets that are not graphs. I will finish my presentation with highlights on work in progress, including closed-loop Data-Driven analysis and experiments, Data-Driven molecular dynamics, Data-Driven inelasticity and publicly-editable material data repositories and data management from a Data-Driven perspective.