Digital rheometer twins: Learning the hidden rheology of complex fluids through rheology-informed graph neural networks

Precise and reliable prediction of soft and structured materials’ behavior under flowing conditions is of great interest to academics and industrial researchers alike. The classical route to achieving this goal is to construct constitutive relations that, through simplifying assumptions, approximate the time- and rate-dependent stress response of a complex fluid to an imposed deformation. The parameters of these simplified models are then identified by suitable rheological testing. The accuracy of each model is limited by the assumptions made in its construction, and, to a lesser extent, the ability to determine numerical values of parameters from the experimental data. In this work, we leverage advances in machine learning methodologies to construct rheology-informed graph neural networks (RhiGNets) that are capable of learning the hidden rheology of a complex fluid through a limited number of experiments. A multifidelity approach is then taken to combine limited additional experimental data with the RhiGNet predictions to develop “digital rheometers” that can be used in place of a physical instrument.