Self-adaptive sampling for sequential surrogate modeling of time-consuming finite element analysis

Abstract

This study presents a new approach of surrogate modeling for time-consuming finite element analysis. A surrogate model is widely used to reduce the computational cost under an iterative computational analysis. Although a variety of the methods have been widely investigated, there are still difficulties in surrogate modeling from a practical point of view: (1) How to derive optimal design of experiments (i.e., the number of training samples and their locations); and (2) diagnostics of the surrogate model. To overcome these difficulties, we propose a sequential surrogate modeling based on Gaussian process model (GPM) with self-adaptive sampling. The proposed approach not only enables further sampling to make GPM more accurate, but also evaluates the model adequacy within a sequential framework. The applicability of the proposed approach is first demonstrated by using mathematical test functions. Then, it is applied as a substitute of the iterative finite element analysis to Monte Carlo simulation for a response uncertainty analysis under correlated input uncertainties. In all numerical studies, it is successful to build GPM automatically with the minimal user intervention. The proposed approach can be customized for the various response surfaces and help a less experienced user save his/her efforts.