Using replica exchange Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and thermodynamic integration for comparison of dynamic rainfall-runoff models

Scientific Conference (2023, January 25)

SOniCS: Develop intuition on biomechanical systems through interactive error controlled simulations

E-print/Working paper (2022)

This new approach allows the user to experiment with model choices easily and quickly without requiring in-depth expertise, as constitutive models can be modified by one line of code only. This ease in ... [more ▼]

This new approach allows the user to experiment with model choices easily and quickly without requiring in-depth expertise, as constitutive models can be modified by one line of code only. This ease in building new models makes SOniCS ideal to develop surrogate, reduced order mod- els and to train machine learning algorithms for uncertainty quantification or to enable patient-specific simulations. SOniCS is thus not only a tool that facilitates the development of surgical training simulations but also, and perhaps more importantly, paves the way to increase the intuition of users or otherwise non-intuitive behaviors of (bio)mechanical systems. The plugin uses new developments of the FEniCSx project enabling au- tomatic generation with FFCx of finite element tensors such as the local residual vector and Jacobian matrix. We validate our approach with nu- merical simulations such as manufactured solutions, cantilever beams, and benchmarks provided by FEBio. We reach machine precision accuracy and demonstrate the use of the plugin for a real-time haptic simulation involv- ing a surgical tool controlled by the user in contact with a hyperelastic liver. We include complete examples showing the use of our plugin for sim- ulations involving Saint Venant-Kirchhoff, Neo-Hookean, Mooney-Rivlin, and Holzapfel Ogden anisotropic models as supplementary material. [less ▲]

Bubble-Enriched Smoothed Finite Element Methods for Nearly-Incompressible Solids

in Computer Modeling in Engineering and Sciences (2021), 127(2), 411-436

This work presents a locking-free smoothed finite element method (S-FEM) for the simulation of soft matter modelled by the equations of quasi-incompressible hyperelasticity. The proposed method overcomes ... [more ▼]

This work presents a locking-free smoothed finite element method (S-FEM) for the simulation of soft matter modelled by the equations of quasi-incompressible hyperelasticity. The proposed method overcomes well-known issues of standard finite element methods (FEM) in the incompressible limit: the over-estimation of stiffness and sensitivity to severely distorted meshes. The concepts of cell-based, edge-based and node-based S-FEMs are extended in this paper to three-dimensions. Additionally, a cubic bubble function is utilized to improve accuracy and stability. For the bubble function, an additional displacement degree of freedom is added at the centroid of the element. Several numerical studies are performed demonstrating the stability and validity of the proposed approach. The obtained results are compared with standard FEM and with analytical solutions to show the effectiveness of the method. [less ▲]

A Tutorial on Bayesian Inference to Identify Material Parameters in Solid Mechanics

in Archives of Computational Methods in Engineering (2019)

The aim of this contribution is to explain in a straightforward manner how Bayesian inference can be used to identify material parameters of material models for solids. Bayesian approaches have already ... [more ▼]

The aim of this contribution is to explain in a straightforward manner how Bayesian inference can be used to identify material parameters of material models for solids. Bayesian approaches have already been used for this purpose, but most of the literature is not necessarily easy to understand for those new to the field. The reason for this is that most literature focuses either on complex statistical and machine learning concepts and/or on relatively complex mechanical models. In order to introduce the approach as gently as possible, we only focus on stress–strain measurements coming from uniaxial tensile tests and we only treat elastic and elastoplastic material models. Furthermore, the stress–strain measurements are created artificially in order to allow a one-to-one comparison between the true parameter values and the identified parameter distributions. [less ▲]

Simple and extensible plate and shell finite element models through automatic code generation tools

in Computers and Structures (2018), 209

A large number of advanced finite element shell formulations have been developed, but their adoption is hindered by complexities of transforming mathematical formulations into computer code. Furthermore ... [more ▼]

A large number of advanced finite element shell formulations have been developed, but their adoption is hindered by complexities of transforming mathematical formulations into computer code. Furthermore, it is often not straightforward to adapt existing implementations to emerging frontier problems in thin structural mechanics including nonlinear material behaviour, complex microstructures, multi-physical couplings, or active materials. We show that by using a high-level mathematical modelling strategy and automatic code generation tools, a wide range of advanced plate and shell finite element models can be generated easily and efficiently, including: the linear and non-linear geometrically exact Naghdi shell models, the Marguerre-von K ́arm ́an shallow shell model, and the Reissner-Mindlin plate model. To solve shear and membrane-locking issues, we use: a novel re-interpretation of the Mixed Interpolation of Tensorial Component (MITC) procedure as a mixed-hybridisable finite element method, and a high polynomial order Partial Selective Reduced Integration (PSRI) method. The effectiveness of these approaches and the ease of writing solvers is illustrated through a large set of verification tests and demo codes, collected in an open-source library, FEniCS-Shells, that extends the FEniCS Project finite element problem solving environment. [less ▲]

Calculating the Malliavin derivative of some stochastic mechanics problems

in PLoS ONE (2017), 12(12), 0189994

The Malliavin calculus is an extension of the classical calculus of variations from deterministic functions to stochastic processes. In this paper we aim to show in a practical and didactic way how to ... [more ▼]

The Malliavin calculus is an extension of the classical calculus of variations from deterministic functions to stochastic processes. In this paper we aim to show in a practical and didactic way how to calculate the Malliavin derivative, the derivative of the expectation of a quantity of interest of a model with respect to its underlying stochastic parameters, for four problems found in mechanics. The non-intrusive approach uses the Malliavin Weight Sampling (MWS) method in conjunction with a standard Monte Carlo method. The models are expressed as ODEs or PDEs and discretised using the finite difference or finite element methods. Specifically, we consider stochastic extensions of; a 1D Kelvin-Voigt viscoelastic model discretised with finite differences, a 1D linear elastic bar, a hyperelastic bar undergoing buckling, and incompressible Navier-Stokes flow around a cylinder, all discretised with finite elements. A further contribution of this paper is an extension of the MWS method to the more difficult case of non-Gaussian random variables and the calculation of second-order derivatives. We provide open-source code for the numerical examples in this paper. [less ▲]

Reduced basis Nitsche-based domain decomposition: a biomedical application

Scientific Conference (2017, March 10)

Nowadays, the personalized biomedical simulations demand real-time efficient and reliable method to alleviate the computational complexity of high-fidelity simulation. In such applications, the necessity ... [more ▼]

Nowadays, the personalized biomedical simulations demand real-time efficient and reliable method to alleviate the computational complexity of high-fidelity simulation. In such applications, the necessity of solving different substructure, e.g. tissues or organs, with different numbers of the degrees of freedom and of coupling the reduced order spaces for each substructure poses a challenge in the on-fly simulation. In this talk, this challenge is taken into account employing the Nitsche-based domain decomposition technique inside the reduced order model [1]. This technique with respect to other domain decomposition approach allows obtaining a solution with the same accuracy of underlying finite element formulation and to flexibly treat interface with non-matching mesh. The robustness of the coupling is determined by the penalty coefficients that is chosen using ghost penalty technique [2]. Furthermore, to reduce the computational complexity of the on-fly assembling it is employed the empirical interpolation approach proposed in [3]. The numerical tests, performed using FEniCS[4], petsc4py and slepc4py [5], shows the good performance of the method and the reduction of computation cost. [1] Baroli, D., Beex L. and Bordas, S. Reduced basis Nitsche-based domain decomposition. In preparation. [2] Burman, E., Claus, S., Hansbo, P., Larson, M. G., & Massing, A. (2015). CutFEM: Discretizing geometry and partial differential equations. International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 104(7), 472-501. [3] E. Schenone, E., Beex,L., Hale, J.S., Bordas S. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition with reduced integration method. Application to nonlinear problems. In preparation. [4] A. Logg, K.-A. Mardal, G. N. Wells et al. Automated Solution of Differential Equations by the Finite Element Method, Springer 2012. [5] L. Dalcin, P. Kler, R. Paz, and A. Cosimo, Parallel Distributed Computing using Python, Advances in Water Resources, 34(9):1124-1139, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2011.04.013 [less ▲]

Numerical methods for fracture/cutting of heterogeneous materials

Presentation (2016, December)

POD-based Reduction Methods, the Quasicontinuum Method and their Resemblance

Scientific Conference (2016, June)

POD-based reduction methods and the quasicontinuum method share two similar reduction steps to increase the computational speed of large mechanical models. Here, they are compared with each other.

Bayesian statistical inference on the material parameters of a hyperelastic body

in Proceedings of the ACME-UK 2016 24th Conference on Computational Mechanics (2016, March 31)

We present a statistical method for recovering the material parameters of a heterogeneous hyperelastic body. Under the Bayesian methodology for statistical inverse problems, the posterior distribution ... [more ▼]

We present a statistical method for recovering the material parameters of a heterogeneous hyperelastic body. Under the Bayesian methodology for statistical inverse problems, the posterior distribution encodes the probability of the material parameters given the available displacement observations and can be calculated by combining prior knowledge with a finite element model of the likelihood. In this study we concentrate on a case study where the observations of the body are limited to the displacements on the surface of the domain. In this type of problem the Bayesian framework (in comparison with a classical PDE-constrained optimisation framework) can give not only a point estimate of the parameters but also quantify uncertainty on the parameter space induced by the limited observations and noisy measuring devices. There are significant computational and mathematical challenges when solving a Bayesian inference problem in the case that the parameter is a field (i.e. exists infinite-dimensional Banach space) and evaluating the likelihood involves the solution of a large-scale system of non-linear PDEs. To overcome these problems we use dolfin-adjoint to automatically derive adjoint and higher-order adjoint systems for efficient evaluation of gradients and Hessians, develop scalable maximum aposteriori estimates, and use efficient low-rank update methods to approximate posterior covariance matrices. [less ▲]