Mode shape recognition is a fundamental task in automotive NVH development, yet it remains dependent on manual visual inspection by experienced engineers. Existing approaches based on engineering heuristics, Modal Assurance Criterion (MAC), or geometry-dependent AI representations often exhibit limited robustness across different vehicle architectures, finite element (FE) meshes, and experimental measurement layouts, restricting their industrial applicability. This paper presents a Canonical Engineering Graph Representation and region-aware graph learning framework for robust and explainable 3D mode shape recognition. Rather than learning directly from vehicle-specific FE meshes, heterogeneous FE models and experimental measurements are transformed into a common graph whose nodes represent semantically meaningful structural regions connected through engineering-informed relationships. Geometry-independent regional descriptors are combined with graph attention learning and region-aware pooling to capture structural interactions while preserving engineering semantics and enabling physically interpretable predictions. The resulting representation decouples engineering knowledge from numerical discretization, allowing transfer across different vehicle programs without requiring identical mesh topology or sensor configurations. The proposed framework is validated using FE and experimental datasets from four vehicle programs under severe label scarcity. Results demonstrate high classification accuracy, cross-vehicle transferability, and physically meaningful explanations by directly relating predictions to engineering-defined structural regions used in NVH analysis. Beyond mode shape recognition, the proposed Canonical Engineering Graph Representation provides a reusable engineering abstraction for trustworthy and transferable AI across heterogeneous simulation and experimental workflows.
Nonlinear finite element crash simulations are accurate but computationally expensive, limiting their use in iterative design optimisation. Machine-learning surrogate models based on graph neural networks (GNNs) offer a faster alternative. Message-passing GNNs are widely used for mesh simulation, and their shared node and edge update functions are relatively generalisable across varying graph structures. By contrast, non-shareable edge-specific aggregation layers can capture nonlinear relationships more accurately but usually require fixed graph connectivity, which limits generalisability. This paper presents Mask-Morph Graph U-Net (MMGUNet), a practical approach to addressing the limitation of hierarchical Graph U-Net architectures that use edge-specific downsampling and upsampling layers. Fixed coarse graph connectivity is required for edge-specific layers. To retain this while improving spatial correspondence, the proposed method morphs the coarsened graph hierarchy to each input mesh using feature-aligned barycentric parameterisation before constructing cross-graph edges. It further applies node masking during supervised pretraining, followed by parameter-efficient fine-tuning in which high-parameter edge-specific layers are frozen. The proposed approach is evaluated in in-distribution, out-of-distribution, and cross-component transfer settings using mean Euclidean distance and maximum intrusion percentage error. Results show that coarse-graph morphing improves test accuracy relative to a fixed-coarse-graph baseline, while masked supervised pretraining reduces the train-test discrepancy and improves data efficiency during transfer. The proposed model also achieves lower prediction error compared with external baselines. These results demonstrate a practical route toward reusable, data-efficient mesh-based surrogate modelling for crashworthiness design exploration.
Finite element analysis (FEA) is essential for structural design but remains computationally expensive, particularly when evaluating multiple design iterations or load scenarios. Machine learning surrogate models offer a promising alternative, yet most approaches struggle with a critical limitation: generalizing across varying geometries. This work presents a mesh graph network (MGN) for predicting von Mises stress fields in 2D structural components with arbitrary hole geometries. Unlike traditional machine learning approaches that use absolute node coordinates as features, the proposed model builds on existing MGN frameworks that encode node types (e.g., fixed boundary, free surface, hole edge), relative edge features (distance between neighbors), and global features (applied load). This architecture is inherently translation- and rotation-invariant, enabling generalization to unseen geometries without retraining. The MGN was trained on 11 plate geometries under 20 load conditions and evaluated on 7 unseen geometries and 3 unseen loads. In the most favorable case, the model achieves R2≥0.97 on an unseen geometry and unseen load, compared to R2≈0.01--0.86 for conventional models (Random Forest, Gradient Boosting , K-Nearest Neighbors) trained on identical data. However, even in less favorable cases, the MGN model still outperforms conventional models. This work extends the mesh-based simulation framework of Pfaff et al. (arXiv:2010.03409) to structural mechanics, demonstrating that graph neural networks can serve as efficient surrogates for finite element analysis across varying geometries.
Full-vehicle crash simulations are computationally expensive, limiting their use in iterative design exploration. This work investigates learned hybrid surrogate models (MeshTransolver, MeshGeoTransolver, and MeshGeoFLARE) for predicting time-resolved structural deformation fields in an industrial lateral pole-impact benchmark. We evaluate whether neural surrogates can reproduce full-field crash kinematics with sufficient accuracy, spatial regularity, and structural plausibility for engineering interpretation. The proposed architectures combine local mesh message passing, geometry-aware global attention, and sparse contact-aware correction for autoregressive crash rollout. We compare mesh-based graph neural networks, attention-based geometric models, and hybrid architectures under a common training and hyperparameter configuration. The hybrid models capture both short-range structural interactions and long-range deformation patterns, while a sparse contact-aware variant assesses the effect of dynamic proximity interactions during rollout. On a 25-sample full-vehicle test set, the best hybrid model achieves a temporal mean root-mean-square error of 3.20 mm. While geometry-aware attention baselines are quantitatively competitive, qualitative side-view inspection shows they can introduce local spatial noise and deformation irregularities that complicate structural interpretation. In contrast, hybrid mesh-attention models provide the best balance between scalar accuracy, survival-space consistency, and physically interpretable displacement fields. These results suggest that crash surrogate assessment should combine global error metrics with downstream safety-relevant quantities and qualitative field inspection. The proposed methodology enables fast full-field predictions while preserving essential structural information for industrial crash-engineering analysis.
Gabriel Curtosi, Carlos Manuel Ruiz Ruiz, Fabiola Cavaliere +1