Past Event: Oden Institute Seminar

Physics Discovery by Variational System Identification: The Differential Equations of Pattern Formation, and Constitutive Models of Soft Materials

Krishna Garikipati, Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Professor, Mathematics, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

Abstract

In this talk, I will provide an overview of our recent work in data-driven methods to enhance computational materials physics models. This body of work focuses on system inference, where we seek to identify physical mechanisms via their mathematical signatures as differential or algebraic operators. Our approach of Variational System Identification leverages the weak form of partial differential equations to identify the physics underlying pattern formation, and the deformation mechanisms of soft materials. The framework of Variational System Identification has to address several challenges specific to experimental characterization of materials, such as data that is noisy, sparse, originates from different specimens, spans dynamics to steady state regimes, must obey physical constraints, and result in stable models. I will present our recent work on data that comes from direct numerical simulation and from physical experiments.

Biography

Krishna Garikipati obtained his PhD at Stanford University in 1996, and after a few years of post-doctoral work, he joined the University of Michigan in 2000, where is now a Professor in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics. Since 2016 he also has served as the Director of the Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery &Engineering (MICDE). His research is in computational science, with applications drawn  from materials physics, biophysics, mechanics and mathematical biology. Of recent interest are data-driven approaches to computational science. He has been awarded the DOE Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), and a Humboldt Research Fellowship. He is a fellow of the US Association for Computational Mechanics, a Life Member of Clare Hall at University of Cambridge, and a visiting scholar in Computational Biology at the Flatiron Institute of the Simons Foundation.