Surrogate modeling of multi-dimensional premixed and non-premixed combustion using pseudo-time stepping physics-informed neural networks

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) have emerged as a promising alternative to conventional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approaches for solving and modeling multi-dimensional flow fields. They offer instant inference speed and cost-effectiveness without the need for training datasets. However, compared to common data-driven methods, purely learning the physical constraints of partial differential equations and boundary conditions is much more challenging and prone to convergence issues leading to incorrect local optima. This training robustness issue significantly increases the difficulty of fine-tuning PINNs and limits their widespread adoption. In this work, we present improvements to the prior field-resolving surrogate modeling framework for combustion systems based on PINNs. First, inspired by the time-stepping schemes used in CFD numerical methods, we introduce a pseudo-time stepping loss aggregation algorithm to enhance the convergence robustness of the PINNs training process. This new pseudo-time stepping PINNs (PTS-PINNs) method is then tested in non-reactive convection–diffusion problem, and the results demonstrated its good convergence capability for multi-species transport problems. Second, the effectiveness of the PTS-PINNs method was verified in the case of methane–air premixed combustion, and the results show that the L2 norm relative error of all variables can be reduced within 5%. Finally, we also extend the capability of the PTS-PINNs method to address a more complex methane–air non-premixed combustion problem. The results indicate that the PTS-PINNs method can still achieve commendable accuracy by reducing the relative error to within 10%. Overall, the PTS-PINNs method demonstrates the ability to rapidly and accurately identify the convergence direction of the model, surpassing traditional PINNs methods in this regard.