Discovering uncertainty: Gaussian constitutive neural networks with correlated weights

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Hauptverfasser: McCulloch, Jeremy A., Kuhl, Ellen
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author McCulloch, Jeremy A.
Kuhl, Ellen
author_facet McCulloch, Jeremy A.
Kuhl, Ellen
contents When characterizing materials, it can be important to not only predict their mechanical properties, but also to estimate the probability distribution of these properties across a set of samples. Constitutive neural networks allow for the automated discovery of constitutive models that exactly satisfy physical laws given experimental testing data, but are only capable of predicting the mean stress response. Stochastic methods treat each weight as a random variable and are capable of learning their probability distributions. Bayesian constitutive neural networks combine both methods, but their weights lack physical interpretability and we must sample each weight from a probability distribution to train or evaluate the model. Here we introduce a more interpretable network with fewer parameters, simpler training, and the potential to discover correlated weights: Gaussian constitutive neural networks. We demonstrate the performance of our new Gaussian network on biaxial testing data, and discover a sparse and interpretable four-term model with correlated weights. Importantly, the discovered distributions of material parameters across a set of samples can serve as priors to discover better constitutive models for new samples with limited data. We anticipate that Gaussian constitutive neural networks are a natural first step towards generative constitutive models informed by physical laws and parameter uncertainty.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_12679
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Discovering uncertainty: Gaussian constitutive neural networks with correlated weights
McCulloch, Jeremy A.
Kuhl, Ellen
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Machine Learning
When characterizing materials, it can be important to not only predict their mechanical properties, but also to estimate the probability distribution of these properties across a set of samples. Constitutive neural networks allow for the automated discovery of constitutive models that exactly satisfy physical laws given experimental testing data, but are only capable of predicting the mean stress response. Stochastic methods treat each weight as a random variable and are capable of learning their probability distributions. Bayesian constitutive neural networks combine both methods, but their weights lack physical interpretability and we must sample each weight from a probability distribution to train or evaluate the model. Here we introduce a more interpretable network with fewer parameters, simpler training, and the potential to discover correlated weights: Gaussian constitutive neural networks. We demonstrate the performance of our new Gaussian network on biaxial testing data, and discover a sparse and interpretable four-term model with correlated weights. Importantly, the discovered distributions of material parameters across a set of samples can serve as priors to discover better constitutive models for new samples with limited data. We anticipate that Gaussian constitutive neural networks are a natural first step towards generative constitutive models informed by physical laws and parameter uncertainty.
title Discovering uncertainty: Gaussian constitutive neural networks with correlated weights
topic Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.12679