Predicting and explaining nonlinear material response using deep physically guided neural networks with internal variables

Nonlinear materials are often difficult to model with classical state model theory because they have a complex and sometimes inaccurate physical and mathematical description, or we simply do not know how to describe such materials in terms of relations between external and internal variables. In many disciplines, neural network methods have emerged as powerful tools to identify very complex and nonlinear correlations. In this work, we use the very recently developed concept of physically guided neural networks with internal variables (PGNNIVs) to discover constitutive laws using a model-free approach and training solely with measured force–displacement data. PGNNIVs make a particular use of the physics of the problem to enforce constraints on specific hidden layers and are able to make predictions without internal variable data. We demonstrate that PGNNIVs are capable of predicting both internal and external variables under unseen loading scenarios, regardless of the nature of the material considered (linear, with hardening or softening behavior and hyperelastic), unravelling the constitutive law of the material hence explaining its nature altogether, endowing the method with some explanatory character that distances it from the traditional black box approach.