Prof. J.S. Chen
Department of Structural Engineering
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of California, San Diego

When Machine Learning Meets Computational Mechanics - A New Paradigm in Scientific Computing

ABSTRACT: After several decades of development in computational methods such as the Finite Element Method and Meshfree Method, several classes of engineering and scientific problems remain challenging, for instance, generalizable material models for complex material systems, problems with moving strong and weak discontinuities, model order reduction for nonlinear systems, to name a few. The fast-growing research and development in data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence offer new opportunities for the development of new paradigms in scientific computing. This talk presents a few recent advances in achieving this objective: 1) manifold learning based “model-free” data-driven computing for linear and nonlinear materials, 2) model order and dimension reduction in physics-informed data-driven computing, 3) neural network enhancement of Galerkin solution for problems with weak and strong discontinuities, and 4) image-based computational framework for digital twin applications. These unique combinations of machine learning techniques and advanced computational methods have expanded the horizon of computational mechanics and scientific computing well beyond what the conventional computational methods can offer. Applications to plasticity, localization, fracture, thermal fatigue, and musculoskeletal digital twin will be presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of these new developments for scientific computing.

BIOGRAPHY: J. S. Chen is the William Prager Chair Professor and Distinguished Professor of the Structural Engineering Department and the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department as well as the Founding Director of the Center for Extreme Events Research at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Before joining UCSD in 2013, he was the Chancellor’s Professor of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, and Mathematics Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he served as the Department Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering during 2007-2012. J. S. Chen’s research is in computational mechanics and multiscale materials modeling with specialization in the development of meshfree methods. He is a past President of the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM) and a past President of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI). He has received numerous awards, including the Computational Mechanics Award from the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM), the Grand Prize from the Japan Society for Computational Engineering and Science (JSCES), the Ted Belytschko Applied Mechanics Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Applied Mechanics Division, the USACM Belytschko Medal, the Computational Mechanics Award from the Japan Association for Computational Mechanics (JACM), and the ICACM Award from the International Chinese Association for Computational Mechanics (ICACM), among others. He is a Fellow of the USACM, IACM, ASME, EMI, Society of Engineering Science (SES), ICACM, and International Conference on Computational & Experimental Engineering and Sciences (ICCEES). He received a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Northwestern University.