A Jin--Xin Relaxation Gradual Convergence Method for Conservation-Law PINNs

Abstract

The Jin--Xin relaxation of a nonlinear hyperbolic conservation law introduces a relaxation parameter that controls the width of the internal layer resolving a shock; the discontinuity of the limiting conservation law emerges only in the singular limit as this width vanishes. Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) use smooth network approximations and are therefore not well suited to this limit, while relaxation PINNs with a fixed parameter resolve only a single scale and cannot follow the multiscale transition toward the limiting solution. We propose the Jin--Xin relaxation gradual convergence method (JXRGCM), which treats the relaxation parameter as a continuation variable, annealing it to zero along a schedule and warm-starting each stage from the previous one, so that the approximation follows the relaxation profile through progressively sharper scales. Under the sub-characteristic condition we establish a stability estimate whose constant is independent of the relaxation parameter; combined with the relaxation limit, it yields for scalar conservation laws an $L^2$ convergence rate of $\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{1/4})$ toward the entropy solution. Numerical experiments on the Burgers equation, the shallow-water dam-break problem, and the Sod shock tube show that JXRGCM improves shock and rarefaction resolution compared with fixed-parameter relaxation PINNs and other physics-informed approaches.