Physics Informed Neural Networks for Modeling of 3D Flow-Thermal Problems

Physics Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) represent the intersection between physics-based modeling and deep learning, but successfully training PINNs in 3D for highly nonlinear PDEs on complex domains remains a challenging task. In this paper, PINNs are used to solve the 3D incompressible Navier-Stokes (NS) equations at high Reynolds numbers for complex geometries, using very sparsely distributed solution data in the domain. The effect of the amount of data provided and the PDE-based regularizers are investigated. Additionally, hybrid data-PINNs are used to create surrogate models to solve a realistic flow-thermal electronics design problem in near real-time, and it is found that the hybrid data-PINNs consistently outperform standard data-driven neural networks when tested on unseen query points. The findings of the paper show how PINNs can be effective when used in conjunction with sparse data for solving 3D nonlinear PDEs or for surrogate modeling of design spaces governed by them.