Model-free data-driven simulation of inelastic materials using structured data sets, tangent space information and transition rules

Abstract Model-free data-driven computational mechanics replaces phenomenological constitutive functions by numerical simulations based on data sets of representative samples in stress-strain space. The distance of strain and stress pairs from the data set is minimized, subject to equilibrium and compatibility constraints. Although this method operates well for non-linear elastic problems, there are challenges dealing with history-dependent materials, since one and the same point in stress-strain space might correspond to different material behaviour. In recent literature, this issue has been treated by including local histories into the data set. However, there is still the necessity to include models for the evolution of specific internal variables. Thus, a mixed formulation of classical and data-driven modeling is obtained. In the presented approach, the data set is augmented with directions in the tangent space of points in stress-strain space. Moreover, the data set is divided into subsets corresponding to different material behaviour. Based on this classification, transition rules map the modeling points to the various subsets. The approach will be applied to non-linear elasticity and elasto-plasticity with isotropic hardening.