Data publishing in mechanics and dynamics: challenges, guidelines, and examples from engineering design

Data-Centric Engineering, vol. 6

Abstract

Abstract Data-based methods have gained increasing importance in engineering. Success stories are prevalent in areas such as data-driven modeling, control, and automation, as well as surrogate modeling for accelerated simulation. Beyond engineering, generative and large-language models are increasingly helping with tasks that, previously, were solely associated with creative human processes. Thus, it seems timely to seek artificial-intelligence-support for engineering design tasks to automate, help with, or accelerate purpose-built designs of engineering systems for instance in mechanics and dynamics, where design so far requires a lot of specialized knowledge. Compared with established, predominantly first-principles-based methods, the datasets used for training, validation, and test become an almost inherent part of the overall methodology. Thus, data publishing becomes just as important in (data-driven) engineering science as appropriate descriptions of conventional methodology in publications in the past. However, in mechanics and dynamics, quite widely, still traditional publishing practices are prevalent that largely do not yet take into account the rising role of data as much as that may already be the case in pure data-scientific research. This article analyzes the value and challenges of data publishing in mechanics and dynamics, in particular regarding engineering design tasks, showing that the latter raise also challenges and considerations not typical in fields where data-driven methods have been booming originally. Researchers currently find barely any guidance to overcome these challenges. Thus, ways to deal with these challenges are discussed and a set of examples from across different design problems shows how data publishing can be put into practice.

Authors 17

1. Henrik Ebel corresponding

   Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Mechanical Engineering, LUT University, Lappeenranta, Finland

2. Jan van Delden

   University of Göttingen

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Computer Science, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

3. Timo Lüddecke

   University of Göttingen

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Computer Science, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

4. Aditya Borse Aachen Institute of General Mechanics

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of General Mechanics (IAM), RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany

5. Rutwik Gulakala Aachen Institute of General Mechanics

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of General Mechanics (IAM), RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany

6. Marcus Stoffel Aachen Institute of General Mechanics

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of General Mechanics (IAM), RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany

7. Manish Yadav

   Technische Universität Berlin

   Affiliation as printed

   Cyber-Physical Systems in Mechanical Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

8. M. Stender

   Technische Universität Berlin

   Affiliation as printed

   Cyber-Physical Systems in Mechanical Engineering, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

9. Leon Schindler

   Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute for Computational Physics in Engineering, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Kaiserslautern, Germany

10. Kristin M. de Payrebrune

    Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute for Computational Physics in Engineering, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Kaiserslautern, Germany

11. Maximilian Raff

    University of Stuttgart

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute for Nonlinear Mechanics, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

12. C. David Remy

    University of Stuttgart

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute for Nonlinear Mechanics, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

13. Benedict Röder

    University of Stuttgart

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute of Engineering and Computational Mechanics, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

14. Tobias Rentschler

    University of Stuttgart

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Hydraulic Machinery, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

15. Alexander Tismer

    University of Stuttgart

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Hydraulic Machinery, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

16. Stefan Riedelbauch

    University of Stuttgart

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Hydraulic Machinery, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

17. Peter Eberhard

    University of Stuttgart

    Affiliation as printed

    Institute of Engineering and Computational Mechanics, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany