Inferring physical fields in coupled systems with unknown parameters from incomplete observations using physics-constrained attentive neural operators
Organizations: School of Mathematics, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China · School of Sciences, Great Bay University, Dongguan, China · John Hopcroft Center for Computer Science, School of Computer Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Abstract
Given incomplete measurements of a single physical field in a coupled system with unknown parameters, can we infer its full physical state and identify the underlying parameters? This problem is challenging because multiple coupled fields must be reconstructed simultaneously from limited observations of only one, while the system parameters are unknown. In this work, we propose a machine learning framework for full-field reconstruction and parameter identification of unknown physical systems from sparse observations of a single physical field. Specifically, the cross-attention encoder propagates sparse sensor observations onto a regular grid to construct a sensor-conditioned latent representation, while a Fourier neural operator (FNO) decoder captures global spatial dependencies to reconstruct all coupled physical fields. The network parameters and unknown physical parameters are jointly optimized by minimizing observation losses, governing equation residuals, and boundary/initial condition constraints. The proposed approach is validated on two- and three-dimensional lid-driven cavity flows, a two-dimensional cylinder wake, and a two-dimensional non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics problem, demonstrating the recovery performance of unobserved fields and physical parameters from incomplete observations.
Figures & tables
| Benchmark | Sparse observations | Inferred fields and parameters |
|---|---|---|
| 2D lid-driven cavity | Boundary pressure . at ; at . | Full field and . |
| 3D lid-driven cavity | Boundary pressure ; . | Full field and . |
| 2D cylinder wake | Boundary velocity ; . No pressure observations. | Time-dependent field , , and . |
| 2D non-ideal MHD | Magnetic field ; . Optional pressure observations: none, boundary, or interior; when used. | Space–time fields , current density , and parameters . |
| # Sensors | Noise level | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 0.00 | |||||
| 200 | 0.00 | |||||
| 300 | 0.00 | |||||
| 100 | 0.01 | |||||
| 200 | 0.01 | |||||
| 300 | 0.01 |
| Method | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanilla PINN | ||||||
| Ours | ||||||
| Vanilla PINN | ||||||
| Ours |
| Case | Feedback layers | Sensor weighting | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full model | 2 | Residual | |||||
| No sensor weighting | 2 | None | |||||
| One feedback layer | 1 | Residual | |||||
| One feedback layer, no sensor weighting | 1 | None |
| # Sensors | Noise level | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 200 | 0.00 | |||||
| 300 | 0.00 | |||||
| 400 | 0.00 | |||||
| 200 | 0.01 | |||||
| 300 | 0.01 | |||||
| 400 | 0.01 |
| Case | Feedback layers | Sensor weighting | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full model | 2 | Residual | |||||
| No sensor weighting | 2 | None | |||||
| One feedback layer | 1 | Residual | |||||
| One feedback layer, no sensor weighting | 1 | None |
| Noise level | # Pressure obs. | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | 500 | ||||||
| 1000 | |||||||
| 1500 | |||||||
| 0.01 | 500 | ||||||
| 1000 | |||||||
| 1500 |
| Case | Feedback layers | Sensor weighting | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full model | 1 | Residual | ||||||
| No sensor weighting | 1 | None | ||||||
| No feedback layer | 0 | Residual | ||||||
| No feedback layer, no sensor weighting | 0 | None |
| Method | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanilla PINN | ||||||
| Ours |
| Noise level | # Velocity obs. | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | 13,000 | ||||||
| 14,000 | |||||||
| 15,000 | |||||||
| 0.01 | 13,000 | ||||||
| 14,000 | |||||||
| 15,000 |
| Method | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanilla PINN | ||||||
| Ours |
| Case | Feedback layers | Sensor weighting | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full model | 1 | Residual | |||||
| No sensor weighting | 1 | None | |||||
| No feedback | 0 | Residual | |||||
| No feedback, no sensor weighting | 0 | None |
| Noise level | Pressure obs. | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00 | Internal | 5000 | 10000 | ||||||||
| Internal | 10000 | 10000 | |||||||||
| None | 15,000 | – | |||||||||
| boundary | 15,000 | 10000 | |||||||||
| Internal | 15,000 | 10000 | |||||||||
| 0.01 | Internal | 5000 | 10000 |
| Case | Feedback layers | Sensor weighting | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full model | 2 | Residual | ||||||||
| No sensor weighting | 2 | None | ||||||||
| No feedback layer | 1 | Residual | ||||||||
| No feedback layer, no sensor weighting | 1 | None |
| Method | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanilla PINN | ||||||||
| Ours |
Appendix figures & tables2 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| # Sensors | Noise level | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 0.00 | |||||
| 200 | 0.00 | |||||
| 300 | 0.00 | |||||
| 100 | 0.01 | |||||
| 200 | 0.01 | |||||
| 300 | 0.01 |
| 200 | 0.400947 | 0.406944 | 0.409901 | 0.028775 | |
| 300 | 0.374331 | 0.382087 | 0.385947 | 0.022060 | |
| 400 | 0.467187 | 0.476120 | 0.480551 | 0.023806 |