IG-GAN: A Generative Adversarial Network for Aerodynamic Data Generation Based on Intrinsic Geometry
Authors: Ying Yan, Liwei Hu, Xiaoming Zhang
Organizations: School of Information Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Science and Technology, Shijiazhuang, 050091, China
Abstract
Existing generative models learn data distributions in flat Euclidean space. However, most data in our real world are manifolds embedded in high dimensional Euclidean space. Therefore, we propose an intrinsic-geometry-based generative adversarial network (IG-GAN) for data generation in the field of aerodynamics. The generator of the IG-GAN represents aerodynamic data as a piecewise smooth manifold constructed by Bézier surfaces, and the generator tries to learn the coefficients of each Bézier surface to further combine multiple Bézier surfaces into a smooth manifold automatically. The discriminator in the IG-GAN is a radial-basis-function based discriminator (RBF-D). Experimental results show that IG-GAN achieves lower predicted Mean Squared Errors (MSEs) than those of three baselines. Specifically, on the Burgers' equation dataset, IG-GAN reduces the predicted MSE of velocity u by 97.41% compared with state of the art SSL-Transformer. Additionally, on the ONERA M6 aircraft dataset, IG-GAN reduces the overall MSE of nine aerodynamic coefficients by 82.95% compared with SSL-Transformer.
Airfoil shape design is a fundamental task in aerospace engineering, with a direct impact on flight stability and fuel consumption. Deep learning has recently emerged as a promising tool for this task, but existing deep generative approaches remain limited in both geometric validity and physical controllability. They offer little control over the generated shapes, yielding invalid geometries, and they typically do not condition effectively on aerodynamic performance. To address these issues, this paper proposes AirfoilGen, a valid-by-construction and performance-aware latent diffusion model for airfoil. It first introduces a novel airfoil representation scheme, the circle sweeping representation, to constrain the generative process so that output shapes respect essential airfoil characteristics. It then enables explicit control over aerodynamic performance (e.g., lift and drag coefficients) by operating in a learned latent space: a transformer model encodes airfoil shapes into vector embeddings, and a conditional diffusion model denoises Gaussian noise into these latent embeddings while incorporating target aerodynamic performance. In addition, this paper presents a new dataset of over 200,000 airfoils, which is substantially larger than the widely used UIUC airfoil dataset (1,650 airfoils) and more suitable for training modern deep generative models. Experiments demonstrate that AirfoilGen enables airfoil generation with far greater geometric validity and aerodynamic performance controllability than previously achievable, with an average performance-conditioning accuracy of 98.41%.
Deep generative models and neural operators have demonstrated significant potential for 3D aerodynamic inference. However, they often face inherent challenges in maintaining physical consistency and preserving high-frequency features, primarily due to spectral bias and gradient conflicts within the governing equations. To address these issues, we propose GeoFunFlow-3D, a physics-guided generative flow matching framework. Temporally, we utilize optimal transport theory to build the generation path, ensuring stable training dynamics. Spectrally, we introduce a high-order discrete engine without automatic differentiation (No-AD) to reduce gradient stiffness. Spatially, a topology-aware super-resolution module (SATO) is employed to rigorously enforce physical laws in localized regions such as shock waves. We evaluated our framework on complex industrial datasets. On the BlendedNet dataset, the model successfully avoids mode collapse even under sparse data conditions. For the NASA Rotor37 test, it accurately captures 3D detached shock structures. Compared to conventional operators, GeoFunFlow-3D significantly improves accuracy, reducing the pressure field error (RRMSE) to 0.0215 while maintaining competitive inference efficiency. Ultimately, this work provides a reliable, geometry-driven approach for generating high-dimensional fluid fields.
Urban wind flow reconstruction is essential for assessing air quality, heat dispersion, and pedestrian comfort, yet remains challenging when only sparse sensor data are available. We propose GenDA, a generative data assimilation framework that reconstructs high-resolution wind fields on unstructured meshes from limited observations. The model employs a multiscale graph-based diffusion architecture trained on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and interprets classifier-free guidance as a learned posterior reconstruction mechanism: the unconditional branch learns a geometry-aware flow prior, while the sensor-conditioned branch injects observational constraints during sampling. This formulation enables obstacle-aware reconstruction and generalization to held-out mesh geometries, wind directions, and sensor configurations within the studied urban-flow setting, without retraining. We consider both sparse fixed sensors and trajectory-based observations using the same reconstruction procedure. When evaluated against supervised graph neural network (GNN) baselines and classical reduced-order data assimilation methods, GenDA reduces the relative root-mean-square error (RRMSE) by 25-57% and increases the structural similarity index (SSIM) by 23-33% across the tested meshes. Experiments are conducted on Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations of a real urban neighborhood in Bristol, United Kingdom, at a characteristic Reynolds number of Re≈2×107, featuring complex building geometry and irregular terrain. The proposed framework provides a scalable path toward generative, geometry-aware data assimilation for environmental monitoring in complex domains.