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Physically-Motivated Machine Learning Models for Lagrangian Fluid Mechanics

Rene Winchenbach, Nils Thuerey

Technische Universität München

Physics Based Simulations Group (not with Hu)

Berlin, SPHERIC 2024

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What do we want to do?

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Machine Learning is a quickly growing field of research in many areas

Mostly areas without good existing solutions

PDEs have been well studied for a long time

We have good existing solutions

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Machine Learning could:

  • Improve Performance
  • Add new capabilities, e.g., inverse solutions
  • Describe difficult to model problems, e.g., closure models
  • Used to quickly iterate on designs with good enough approximations

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But what is good enough and how do we get there?

Physics Based Machine Learning | SPHERIC Workshop 2024 | Berlin

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Graph Neural Networks

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Why Basis Functions?

Physics usually requires some constraints to be fullfilled

  • Conservation of Mass
  • Conservation of Momentum
  • …

Solutions should also be smooth and symmetric

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With Basis functions we can directly encode constraints:

  • Antisymmetries (Momentum)
  • Smoothness (via Fourier Terms)
  • Compactness (Window Functions)
  • Spatial Filtering

Lower Parameters for equal results

Computationally expensive but efficient to implement

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Training Task

Machine Learning already difficult enough

We chose a simple scenario:

  • Periodic Boundary Conditions
  • Low Resolution
  • Undriven Flow
  • Similar to Taylor Green Vortex case for validation

Learning Task:

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Purely based on positions over time

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Problem #1: The Task

 

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Problem #1: The Problem

 

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Problem #1: The Solution

 

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Problem # 2

In traditional SPH particle ordering has significant influence on the numerical accuracy

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This is even more apparent for neural simulations

Generalization in general is difficult for networks

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Assume a set of weakly compressible simulations

Only some particle-particle distributions are seen

Especially no short distance interactions!

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If a network makes mistakes…

… then it has to generalize to unseen cases…

… which leads to more mistakes…

Physics Based Machine Learning | SPHERIC Workshop 2024 | Berlin

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Particle Shifting Techniques

Particle Shifting is a well used approach in SPH

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PST restores particle order from a disordered state

In classical simulations this improves accuracy

In neural simulations this avoids generalization

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PST can be done implicitly to achieve good results even from random particle distributions

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However, the error from frame to frame is low, similar to classic SPH, so explicit shifting suffices

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Example Network Behavior

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The First Solution

Why not simply add Shifting to networks?

Similar to classic SPH, integration and shifting are treated seperately!

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No need to learn, or even include it in training

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Simple to implement and gives good results

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However, this is not very elegant

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The First Solution

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The Second Solution

Instead of excluding shifting during training, we can include it!

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This requires a differentiable shifting operator and parameter gradients to propagate through shifting

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Delta-Plus based shifting can work for this

However, training becomes more expensive

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And now the network relies on shifting.

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The Second Solution

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The Second Solution

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Generalization of the networks

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Without PST

With PST

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Conclusion (slides at spheric2024.fluids.dev)

Machine Learning is a black-box

This does not mean that there are not best practices!

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ML best practices make the learning task simpler

Engineering best practices make the network better

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Both can and should work in harmony

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Enforced vs Learned behavior is an open question

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