Reconstruction of the turbulent flow field with sparse measurements using physics-informed neural network

Abstract

Accurate high-resolution flow field prediction based on limited experimental data is a complex task. This research introduces an innovative framework leveraging physics-informed neural network (PINN) to reconstruct high-resolution flow fields using sparse particle image velocimetry measurements for flow over a periodic hill and high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics data for flow over a curved backward-facing step. Model training utilized mean flow measurements, with increased measurement sparsity achieved through various curation strategies. The resulting flow field reconstruction demonstrated marginal error in both test cases, showcasing the ability of the framework to reconstruct the flow field with limited measurement data accurately. Additionally, the study successfully predicted flow fields under two different noise levels, closely aligning with experimental and high-fidelity results (experimental, direct numerical simulation, or large eddy simulation) for both cases. Hyperparameter tuning conducted on the periodic hill case has been applied to the curved backward-facing step case. This research underscores the potential of PINN as an emerging method for turbulent flow field prediction via data assimilation, offering reduced computational costs even with sparse, noisy measurements.