computational fluid dynamics developers

Abstract: Latent neural operators improve the efficiency of operator learning for partial differential equations (PDEs) by performing the main computation on compact latent representations. However, directly compressing the input representation to obtain such compact representations may discard solution-relevant spatial information, especially for PDE solutions with multiscale structures. To address this problem, we propose HiLNO, a hierarchical latent neural operator that constructs a fine-to-coarse-to-fine latent space and further introduces multi-scale supervision (MSS) and anisotropic Gaussian attention. The hierarchy mitigates potential information loss during compression, while MSS aligns intermediate predictions with downsampled target fields, encouraging solution-relevant structures to be captured across multiple spatial scales. Anisotropic Gaussian attention enables feature transfer across the hierarchy, making HiLNO applicable to general geometries. Experiments on representative PDE benchmarks and a large-scale automotive aerodynamics task show that HiLNO achieves competitive predictive accuracy, while reducing the parameter count by an average of 84.4% and FLOPs by an average of 69.2% compared with LinearNO. Additional experiments demonstrate effective generalization to unseen spatial resolutions. Code is available at https://github.com/JcLimath/HiLNO.

Abstract: Objectives in scientific machine learning are often prescribed as a sum of several terms, such as the residual, boundary, initial, and data losses of a physics-informed neural network. In the pullback-corrected scalar auxiliary variable (PB--SAV) method, one scalar tracks the shifted objective while the component gradients build a positive semidefinite curvature correction of rank at most the number of components. We carry that correction into an optimizer with momentum and an adaptive mobility, applying it to the gradient and the stored momentum in a single implicit solve. A mobility that is nonincreasing in the Loewner order yields an exact modified energy law, covering Euclidean and AMSGrad-type choices; the corresponding identity for momentum appended after the solve carries a cross term of indefinite sign. For a fixed mobility we give a necessary and sufficient condition for local stability at a stationary point, depending on the Hessian minus twice the correction, and show that it also gives local geometric convergence for every scalar relaxation sequence. The implicit solve reduces to a dense system whose order is the number of components. In the forward Burgers comparison, four components reduce the mean tail objective by 64.7% and the final solution error by 50.2% relative to one component at the same learning rate and momentum settings.

Abstract: Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) represent a growing frontier in using artificial intelligence to solve partial differential equations (PDEs). Automatic differentiation (AD) plays a central role in this paradigm, which is mesh-free and replaces traditional iterative solvers with gradient-based optimization in continuous space. However, the inherent limitations of AD, particularly in handling higher-order derivatives and discontinuous solutions, pose significant challenges for complex problems. This has motivated a growing number of researchers to explore discretization-based constraints as an alternative path. Yet, the respective applicability of these two paradigms remains largely unexplored. In this work, we conduct systematic experiments across a wide spectrum of problems, from simple linear Poisson to high-Mach hypersonic flows with strong discontinuities. Through a rigorous decomposition of approximation, optimization, and truncation errors, we systematically elucidate the fundamental trade-offs and error-governing mechanisms of both paradigms, as well as two representative network architectures: multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and graph neural network (GNN). Our results reveal a consistent trend: as nonlinearity strengthens, the accuracy advantage of discretization-based constraints becomes increasingly pronounced, with smaller optimization errors compensating for the truncation errors. Moreover, the more complex the nonlinearity and boundary conditions, the greater the advantage of GNN over MLP. These insights offer a robust practical guideline for configuring neural PDE solvers in demanding engineering applications. Our source data and code are available at https://github.com/guoxing0809/neuropde_analysis.