Multiscale modeling of inelastic materials with Thermodynamics-based Artificial Neural Networks (TANN)

The mechanical behavior of inelastic materials with microstructure is very complex and hard to grasp with heuristic, empirical constitutive models. For this purpose, multiscale, homogenization approaches are often used for performing reliable, accurate predictions of the macroscopic mechanical behavior of solids and structures. Nevertheless, the calculation cost of such approaches is extremely high and prohibitive for real-scale applications involving inelastic materials. Recently, data-driven approaches based on machine learning and, in particular, deep learning have risen as a promising alternative to replace ad-hoc constitutive laws and speed-up multiscale numerical methods. However, such approaches require huge amounts of high quality data, fail to give reliable predictions outside the training range and they lack a rigorous frame based on the laws of physics and thermodynamics. As a result, their application to model materials with complex microstructure in inelasticity is not yet established. Here, we propose the so-called Thermodynamics-based Artificial Neural Networks (TANN) for the constitutive modeling of materials with inelastic and complex microstructure. Our approach integrates thermodynamics-aware dimensionality reduction techniques and thermodynamics-based deep neural networks to identify, in an autonomous way, the constitutive laws and discover the internal state variables of complex inelastic materials. The ability of TANN in delivering high-fidelity, physically consistent predictions is demonstrated through several examples both at the microscopic and macroscopic scale. The efficiency and accuracy of TANN in predicting the average and local stress-strain response, the free-energy and the dissipation rate is demonstrated for both regular and perturbed two- and three-dimensional lattice microstructures in inelasticity. TANN manage to identify the internal state variables that characterize the inelastic deformation of the complex microstructural fields. These internal state variables are then used to reconstruct the microdeformation fields of the microstructure at a given state. Finally, a double-scale homogenization scheme (FEM Chi TANN) is used to solve a large scale boundary value problem. The high performance of the homogenized model using TANN is illustrated through detailed comparisons with microstructural calculations at large scale. An excellent agreement is shown for a variety of monotonous and cyclic stress-strain paths. (c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.