Neural Constitutive Learning for Generalized Reaction-Diffusion Systems
Organizations: National Tsing Hua University · NVIDIA
Abstract
Generalized reaction-diffusion systems encompass diverse transport mechanisms and coupled reaction kinetics. A central question for neural PDE solvers is what should be learned so that a common interface can accommodate phase-field and degenerate transport, local reactions, and multispecies coupling. We propose the Neural Constitutive Laws--Mass-Compression-Transport (NCL-MCT) Solver, which learns PDE-specific constitutive responses while retaining temporal evolution in a shared MCT integrator. Transport is represented through mobility and thermodynamic driving force, and reaction through relative reaction rates. These constitutive responses depend on the current density rather than explicitly on the initial condition or elapsed time, motivating their reuse across different initial conditions and time horizons. The same interface supports velocity-data supervision and known-law supervision, neither of which requires time integration during training. When constitutive laws are known, supervision can be evaluated on independently sampled density fields, enabling trajectory-free constitutive learning without generating solution trajectories. Across seven systems, separately trained constitutive modules share the same interface and MCT integrator and achieve relative rollout errors of to . Tests with unseen initial-condition families and an extended time horizon assess reuse beyond training conditions, while separate experiments demonstrate trajectory-free constitutive learning. These results support constitutive responses as an effective learning target for a shared neural PDE framework.
Figures & tables
| System | Metric | F-FNO ( Tran et al., 2023 ) | CFO ( Hou et al., 2026 ) | DOOL ( Chang et al., 2026 ) | NCL-MCT (Vel.) (Ours) | NCL-MCT (Law) (Ours) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (a) Generalized diffusion | |||||||
| Linear Diffusion | |||||||
| CH | |||||||
| PM | |||||||
| Metric | F-FNO ( Tran et al., 2023 ) | CFO ( Hou et al., 2026 ) | NCL-MCT (Vel.) (Ours) | NCL-MCT (Law) (Ours) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unseen initial conditions | ∗ | ||||
| (5 systems) | ∗ | ||||
| Extended time horizon | † | ||||
| (4 systems) | † | ||||
| ∗ F-FNO is nonfinite on CH and Fisher-KPP; the reported average uses only the 3/5 finite systems and is not directly comparable. | |||||
| † For reactive CH, F-FNO statistics use the 9/10 trajectories that remain finite. | |||||
| System | Metric | DOOL ( Chang et al., 2026 ) | NCL-MCT (Law) (Ours) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linear Diffusion | ||||
| (1D, DOOL setting) | ||||
| CH | ||||
| (DOOL setting) |
Appendix figures & tables32 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| System | Domain | Order | Reaction | range | ||
| Linear Diffusion | 2 | None | 600 | |||
| CH | 4 | None | ||||
| PM | 2 † | None | 2000 | |||
| Fisher-KPP | 2 | Logistic | 500 | |||
| Reactive CH | 4 | Double-well | ||||
| Reactive PM | 2 † | Logistic | 1000 |
| System | Family | Range or random parameters |
|---|---|---|
| Linear Diffusion | GFRF, Equation 37 | |
| CH | GFRF, Equation 37 | |
| Fisher-KPP | GFRF, Equation 37 | |
| Reactive CH | GFRF, Equation 37 | |
| PM | Barenblatt, Equation 38 | |
| Reactive PM | Radial bump, Equation 39 | , |
| System | Family | |
|---|---|---|
| Linear Diffusion | Six Gaussian blobs on a circle, Equation 41 | 600 |
| CH | Two Gaussian blobs, Equation 42 | |
| Fisher-KPP | Gaussian ring, Equation 43 | 500 |
| Reactive CH | Two Gaussian blobs, Equation 42 | |
| Schnakenberg | Spot lattice, Equation 44 |
| System | Metric | F-FNO ( Tran et al., 2023 ) | CFO ( Hou et al., 2026 ) | DOOL ( Chang et al., 2026 ) | NCL-MCT (Vel.) (Ours) | NCL-MCT (Law) (Ours) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linear Diffusion | |||||||
| CH | NaN | ||||||
| NaN | |||||||
| Fisher-KPP | NaN | ||||||
| NaN |
| System | ( ) | ( ) | Extrapolated fraction | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linear diffusion | ( ) | ( ) | ||
| CH | ( ) | ( ) | ||
| Fisher-KPP | ( ) | ( ) | ||
| Reactive CH | ( ) | ( ) |
| System | Metric | F-FNO ( Tran et al., 2023 ) | CFO ( Hou et al., 2026 ) | NCL-MCT (Vel.) (Ours) | NCL-MCT (Law) (Ours) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linear Diffusion | |||||
| CH | |||||
| System | Method | Params | VRAM (GiB) | Train (s) | Infer (s) | ms/step | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linear Diffusion | F-FNO | ||||||
| CFO | |||||||
| DOOL | |||||||
| NCL-MCT Solver (Vel.) | |||||||
| NCL-MCT Solver (Law) | |||||||
| CH | F-FNO |
| System | Metric | HC-PINN ( Hao et al., 2026 ) | NCL-MCT (Vel.) (Ours) | NCL-MCT (Law) (Ours) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (a) Generalized diffusion | ||||
| Linear Diffusion | ||||
| CH | ||||
| PM | ||||
| Schnakenberg ( ) | Schnakenberg ( ) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parameterization | Objective | ||||
| Transport | Reaction | Species | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Numerical | Numerical | |||
| Neural | Numerical | |||
| Numerical | Neural | |||