Publications
Metrics for the complexity of material models
Quantitative measures are proposed for characterizing the complexity of material models used in computational mechanics. The algorithms for evaluating these metrics operate on the mathematical equations in the model rather than a code implemen- tation and are different from software complexity measures. The metrics do not rely on a physical understanding of the model, using instead only a formal statement of the equations. A new algorithm detects the dependencies, whether explicit or im- plicit, between all the variables. The resulting pattern of dependencies is expressed in a set of pathways, each of which represents a chain of dependence between the vari- ables. These pathways provide the raw data used in the metrics, which correlate with the expected ease of understanding, coding, and applying the model. Usage of the ComplexityMetrics code is described, with examples.