Quasi second-order methods for PDE-constrained forward and inverse problems

La conception assistée par ordinateur (CAO), les effets visuels, la robotique et de nombreux autres domaines tels que la biologie computationnelle, le génie aérospatial, etc. reposent sur la résolution de problèmes mathématiques. Dans la plupart des cas, des méthodes de calcul sont utilisées pour résoudre ces problèmes. Le choix et la construction de la méthode de calcul ont un impact important sur les résultats et l'efficacité du calcul. La structure du problème peut être utilisée pour créer des méthodes, qui sont plus rapides et produisent des résultats qualitativement meilleurs que les méthodes qui n'utilisent pas la structure. Cette thèse présente trois articles avec trois nouvelles méthodes de calcul s'attaquant à des problèmes de simulation et d'optimisation contraints par des équations aux dérivées partielles (EDP). Dans le premier article, nous abordons le problème de la dissipation d'énergie des solveurs fluides courants dans les effets visuels. Les solveurs de fluides sont omniprésents dans la création d'effets dans les courts et longs métrages d'animation. Nous présentons un schéma d'intégration temporelle pour la dynamique des fluides incompressibles qui préserve mieux l'énergie comparé aux nombreuses méthodes précédentes. La méthode présentée présente une faible surcharge et peut être intégrée à un large éventail de méthodes existantes. L'amélioration de la conservation de l'énergie permet la création d'animations nettement plus dynamiques. Nous abordons ensuite la conception computationelle dont le but est d'exploiter l'outils computationnel dans le but d'améliorer le processus de conception. Plus précisément, nous examinons l'analyse de sensibilité, qui calcule les sensibilités du résultat de la simulation par rapport aux paramètres de conception afin d'optimiser automatiquement la conception. Dans ce contexte, nous présentons une méthode efficace de calcul de la direction de recherche de Gauss-Newton, en tirant parti des solveurs linéaires directs épars modernes. Notre méthode réduit considérablement le coût de calcul du processus d'optimisation pour une certaine classe de problèmes de conception inverse. Enfin, nous examinons l'optimisation de la topologie à l'aide de techniques d'apprentissage automatique. Nous posons deux questions : Pouvons-nous faire de l'optimisation topologique sans maillage et pouvons-nous apprendre un espace de solutions d'optimisation topologique. Nous appliquons des représentations neuronales implicites et obtenons des résultats structurellement sensibles pour l'optimisation topologique sans maillage en guidant le réseau neuronal pendant le processus d'optimisation et en adaptant les méthodes d'optimisation topologique par éléments finis. Notre méthode produit une représentation continue du champ de densité. De plus, nous présentons des espaces de solution appris en utilisant la représentation neuronale implicite.Computer-aided design (CAD), visual effects, robotics and many other fields such as computational biology, aerospace engineering etc. rely on the solution of mathematical problems. In most cases, computational methods are used to solve these problems. The choice and construction of the computational method has large impact on the results and the computational efficiency. The structure of the problem can be used to create methods, that are faster and produce qualitatively better results than methods that do not use the structure. This thesis presents three articles with three new computational methods tackling partial differential equation (PDE) constrained simulation and optimization problems. In the first article, we tackle the problem of energy dissipation of common fluid solvers in visual effects. Fluid solvers are ubiquitously used to create effects in animated shorts and feature films. We present a time integration scheme for incompressible fluid dynamics which preserves energy better than many previous methods. The presented method has low overhead and can be integrated into a wide range of existing methods. The improved energy conservation leads to noticeably more dynamic animations. We then move on to computational design whose goal is to harnesses computational techniques for the design process. Specifically, we look at sensitivity analysis, which computes the sensitivities of the simulation result with respect to the design parameters to automatically optimize the design. In this context, we present an efficient way to compute the Gauss-Newton search direction, leveraging modern sparse direct linear solvers. Our method reduces the computational cost of the optimization process greatly for a certain class of inverse design problems. Finally, we look at topology optimization using machine learning techniques. We ask two questions: Can we do mesh-free topology optimization and can we learn a space of topology optimization solutions. We apply implicit neural representations and obtain structurally sensible results for mesh-free topology optimization by guiding the neural network during optimization process and adapting methods from finite element based topology optimization. Our method produces a continuous representation of the density field. Additionally, we present learned solution spaces using the implicit neural representation

ADD: Analytically Differentiable Dynamics for Multi-Body Systems with Frictional Contact

We present a differentiable dynamics solver that is able to handle frictional contact for rigid and deformable objects within a unified framework. Through a principled mollification of normal and tangential contact forces, our method circumvents the main difficulties inherent to the non-smooth nature of frictional contact. We combine this new contact model with fully-implicit time integration to obtain a robust and efficient dynamics solver that is analytically differentiable. In conjunction with adjoint sensitivity analysis, our formulation enables gradient-based optimization with adaptive trade-offs between simulation accuracy and smoothness of objective function landscapes. We thoroughly analyse our approach on a set of simulation examples involving rigid bodies, visco-elastic materials, and coupled multi-body systems. We furthermore showcase applications of our differentiable simulator to parameter estimation for deformable objects, motion planning for robotic manipulation, trajectory optimization for compliant walking robots, as well as efficient self-supervised learning of control policies.Comment: Moritz Geilinger and David Hahn contributed equally to this wor

SGN: Sparse Gauss-Newton for Accelerated Sensitivity Analysis

We present a sparse Gauss-Newton solver for accelerated sensitivity analysis with applications to a wide range of equilibrium-constrained optimization problems. Dense Gauss-Newton solvers have shown promising convergence rates for inverse problems, but the cost of assembling and factorizing the associated matrices has so far been a major stumbling block. In this work, we show how the dense Gauss-Newton Hessian can be transformed into an equivalent sparse matrix that can be assembled and factorized much more efficiently. This leads to drastically reduced computation times for many inverse problems, which we demonstrate on a diverse set of examples. We furthermore show links between sensitivity analysis and nonlinear programming approaches based on Lagrange multipliers and prove equivalence under specific assumptions that apply for our problem setting.ISSN:0730-0301ISSN:1557-736

A harmonic balance approach for designing compliant mechanical systems with nonlinear periodic motions

We present a computational method for designing compliant mechanical systems that exhibit large-amplitude oscillations. The technical core of our approach is an optimization-driven design tool that combines sensitivity analysis for optimization with the Harmonic Balance Method for simulation. By establishing dynamic force equilibrium in the frequency domain, our formulation avoids the major limitations of existing alternatives: it handles nonlinear forces, side-steps any transient process, and automatically produces periodic solutions. We introduce design objectives for amplitude optimization and trajectory matching that enable intuitive high-level authoring of large-amplitude motions. Our method can be applied to many types of mechanical systems, which we demonstrate through a set of examples involving compliant mechanisms, flexible rod networks, elastic thin shell models, and multi-material solids. We further validate our approach by manufacturing and evaluating several physical prototypes. © 2020 ACM.ISSN:0730-0301ISSN:1557-736

A density-accurate tracking solution for smoke upresolution

International audienceControlling smoke simulations is a notoriously challenging and tedious task, usually requiring many trial-and-error iterations that prevent using expensive computations at high resolutions. Unfortunately, naıvely going from a more efficient low-resolution simulation to a high-quality high-resolution simulation usually results in a different behavior of smoke animation. Moreover, the longer the animation, the more different the result. We propose a tracking procedure where we optimally modify the velocity field of the simulation in order to make the smoke density distribution closely follow the low-resolution density in both space and time. We demonstrate the benefits of our approach by accurately tracking various 2D and 3D simulations. The resulting animations are predictable, preserving the coarse density distribution of the low-resolution guides, while being enhanced with plausible high-frequency details

Design and Motion Planning for a Reconfigurable Robotic Base

ISSN:2377-376