Physics-informed neural networks for solving two-phase flow problems with moving interfaces

TL;DR

This paper develops a meshfree physics-informed neural network method to solve complex two-phase flow problems with moving interfaces, addressing both prescribed and solution-driven interface motions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel PINNs framework that reformulates two-phase flow with moving interfaces as a least-squares minimization problem, including rigorous error analysis.

Findings

The proposed PINNs approach effectively solves various two-phase flow interface problems.

Theoretical error estimates are validated through numerical experiments.

Guidelines for training set distribution improve practical application.

Abstract

In this paper, a meshfree method using physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) is developed for solving two-phase flow problems with moving interfaces, where two immiscible fluids bearing different material properties, are separated by a dynamically evolving interface and interact with each other through interface conditions. Two kinds of distinct scenarios of interface motion are addressed: the prescribed interface motion whose moving velocity is explicitly given, and the solution-driven interface motion whose evolution is determined by the velocity field of two-phase flow. Based upon piecewise deep neural networks and spatiotemporal sampling points/training set in each fluid subdomain, the proposed PINNs framework reformulates the two-phase flow moving interface problem as a least-squares (LS) minimization problem, which involves all residuals of governing equations, interface conditions, boundary conditions and initial conditions. Furthermore, approximation properties of the proposed PINNs approach are analyzed rigorously for the presented two-phase flow model by employing the Reynolds transport theorem in evolving domains, moreover, a comprehensive error estimation is provided to account for additional complexities introduced by the moving interface and the coupling between fluid dynamics and interface evolution. Numerical experiments are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed PINNs approach for various configurations of two-phase flow moving interface problems, and to validate the theoretical findings as well. A practical guidance is thus provided for an efficient training set distribution when applying the proposed PINNs approach to two-phase flow moving interface problems in practice.