Physics-informed neural network for inverse modeling of granular flows

Abstract

Granular flows are ubiquitous in natural and industrial systems, yet their complex dynamics remain difficult to characterize. For inverse problems involving unknown inlet, outlet, and wall boundary conditions, where CFD simulations are challenging, reconstructing complete flow fields from sparse observations constitutes a challenging inverse problem. In this study, a physics-informed neural network framework driven by both physical mechanisms and measurement data is developed to reconstruct the steady-state full-field distribution of granular flows in a pipe. The proposed approach integrates sparse measurement data with governing equations and constitutive relations and is trained using high-fidelity datasets generated by CFD solutions of a continuum model. The framework incorporates a dimensionless loss formulation, physics-informed initialization, dynamic global weighting, and a locally weighted granular temperature data-loss strategy. These treatments enable accurate reconstruction of the complete flow-field evolution. This work establishes a robust methodological framework for flow-field reconstruction in complex granular flow systems.