I am excited to announce that our PhD student Eric Bryant has successfully defended his dissertation "Capturing Evolving Size-Dependent Anisotropy from Brittle Fracture to Plasticity for Geological Materials" and will join Los Alamos National Laboratory as postdoc research associate. His primary appointment will be with the fluid dynamics and solid mechanics group of the Theoretical Division (T-3).

During his tenure in the Sun research group, Eric has been awarded the Presidential Fellowship and the Guggenheim Fellowship. His PhD work focuses on modeling the size effect of evolving anisotropy of fracture and plastic deformation. Traditionally, one may introduce scaling law to incorporate how shear and tensile strengths depend on the size of the specimen. In his work, the main focus is also to investigate how does the rotation among the principal directions of the elastic strain, tensorial internal variables and stress tensor evolves across length scales and during the deformation process. He is the authors of 4 journal articles and one manuscript very close to completion. Among them, three of them published in Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, and one in International Journal of Fracture as listed below. 

Congratulations, Eric! 

Published work:

1. A. Qinami, E.C. Bryant, W.C. Sun, M. Kaliske, Circumventing mesh bias via r-and h-adaptive refinement techniques for the variational eigenfracture model, International Journal of Fracture, doi:10.1007/s10704-019-00349-x, ​2019. 
2. E.C. Bryant, W.C. Sun, Mixed-mode phase field fracture for secondary cracks in isotropic and anisotropic brittle rocks with consistent kinematics, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, doi:10.1016/j.cma.2018.08.008, 2018. [PDF]
3. E.C. Bryant, W.C. Sun, micromorphic-regularized anisotropic Cam-clay-type model for capturing size-dependent anisotropy, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, doi:10.1016/j.cma.2019.05.003, 2019. 
4. S. Na, E.C. Bryant, W.C. Sun, A configurational force for adaptive re-meshing of gradient-enhanced poromechanics problems with history-dependent variables, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, doi:10.1016/j.cma.2019.112572, 2019. [PDF]
5. E.C. Bryant, W.C. Sun, ​Phase field modeling of frictional slip with slip weakening/strengthening  under non-isothermal conditions, in preparation. 

Congratulations again to my Ph.D. student Jarett Poliner for winning the NDSEG Fellowship!
​

Presenter: Dr. Steve WaiChing Sun, Columbia University
Title: Some applications of graph theory in data-driven multi-scale mechanics
Video: Watch a recording of the seminar ​
Abstract: In this talk, we will share our experience in using undirected and directed graphs to solve computational solid mechanics problems with a variety of deep neural networks. In the first half of the talk, we will focus on the usage of undirected weighted graphs that represent the microstructures. We will demonstrate 1) how to effectively represent microstructures such as polycrystals, granular assemblies and composites as node-weighted graphs, a network of nodes with assigned attributes connected by edges, 2) how to create low-dimensional topological descriptors via graph convolution neural network that exhibits spatial and rotational invariance properties and 3) how these topological descriptors can be used to enhance the accuracy and robustness of the forward predictions and generalize the surrogate constitutive models generated via semi-supervised learning. In the second half of the talk, we will examine the application of directed multi-graphs that represent causality/relational knowledge of material laws. By idealizing the process of modeling constitutive laws as a multi-player game, we will examine 4) how the process of writing, validating and falsifying a constitutive law can be formulated as a Markov decision process, and 5) how a model-free deep reinforcement learning paradigm can introduce  artificial intelligence (AI) modelers and experimentalists that learn to create hand-crafted-like constitutive models through competitions and repeated trial and errors. Examples will be provide to illustrate how  these self-interacting, self-improving AI agents discover new hidden hierarchical structures of mechanics knowledge,  spot the weakness of existing models and create new approaches to incorporate non-Euclidean data traditionally excluded in constitutive laws to make predictions more accurate and robust. 

Our postdoctoral research scientist Chuanqi Liu has just received an offer from the Institute of Mechanics in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He is selected by the 100 talent program (pioneering project) of CAS and is offered the position as an associate professor. During his tenure with us, Chuanqi has been a productive member of our team and has published the following peer-reviewed articles: 

1. C. Liu", W.C. Sun, ILS-MPM: an unbiased implicit level-set-based material point method for frictional particulate contact mechanics of deformable particles, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, accepted, 2020. [PDF]
2. C. Liu", W.C. Sun, Shift domain material point method for solids in the finite deformation range, special thematic issue for Meshfree and Particle Methods for Modeling Extreme Loadings, Computational Particle Mechanics, doi: 10.1007/s40571-019-00239-y, 2019. [PDF]

Congratulations, Chuanqi! 

One key drawback of classical discrete/distinct/granular element methods for particulate mechanics is that they cannot generate any kinetic and kinematics information at the sub-grain scales. Nevertheless, many dissipative mechanisms of granular materials are actually originated from path-dependent behaviors at the sub-grain scales where wear, damage, fracture and fragmentation occurs. This simplification therefore may lead to a departure of force chain topology and therefore make the resultant simulations inaccurate. Recovery of these sub-scale information while capturing the geometry and form of each individual grains is inherently a difficult task. 

In this work, our postdoc Dr. Chuanqi Liu introduces an implicit material point method designed to bypass meshing of bodies by employing level set functions to represent boundaries at structured grids. This implicit function representation provides an elegant means to link an unbiased intermediate reference surface with the true boundaries by closest point projection as shown Leichner et al. 2019. We then enforce the contact constraints by a penalty method where the Coulomb friction law is implemented as an elastoplastic constitutive model such that a return mapping algorithm can be used to provide constitutive updates for both the stick and slip states. To evolve the geometry of the contacts properly, the Hamilton-Jacobi equation is solved incrementally such that the level set and material points are both updated according to the deformation field. To improve the accuracy and regularity of the numerical integration of the material point method, a moving least square method is used to project numerical values of the material points back to the standard locations for Gaussian-Legendre quadrature. Several benchmarks are used to verify the proposed model. Comparisons with discrete element simulations are made to analyze the importance of stress fields on predicting the macroscopic responses of granular assemblies. [manuscript]

In recognition of his groundbreaking research illuminating the mechanics and physics of porous geomaterials like rocks, soil, concrete and salt, Professor Steve WaiChing Sun has earned the prestigious John Argyris Award for Young Scientists. This award is given by the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM).
Bridging mathematical science, theoretical mechanics, and industrial applications, Sun’s interests focus on computational poromechanics and geomechanics for a variety of applications, ranging from carbon dioxide storage to disposal of nuclear waste. In addition to the John Argyris award, Sun has received several prominent international awards in theoretical and computational mechanics, including the Zienkiewicz Numerical Methods in Engineering Prize from Institution of Civil Engineers (UK), the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute Leonardo de Vinci Award (USA), Dresden Fellowship (Germany), as well as the young investigator awards from funding agencies, including the US National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the US Air Force Young Investigator Program Award, and the US Army Young Investigator Program Award.
Highlighting distinguished scholarship and outstanding accomplishments, the biennial John Argyris Award for Young Scientists celebrates influential researchers 40 and under. Sun, an assistant professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics since 2014, will be the first Columbia faculty member and the first Chinese American to receive this honor. He will receive the award at the opening ceremony for the joint organization of the 14th IACM World Congress in Computational Mechanics and the 8th European Congress on Computational Methods in Applied Science and Engineering this summer in Paris. [URL]