Improving Pseudo-Time Stepping Convergence for CFD Simulations With
  Neural Networks
Anouk Zandbergen Tycho van Noorden Alexander Heinlein
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of viscous fluids described by
the Navier-Stokes equations are considered. Depending on the Reynolds number of
the flow, the Navier-Stokes equations may exhibit a highly nonlinear behavior.
The system of nonlinear equations resulting from the discretization of the
Navier-Stokes equations can be solved using nonlinear iteration methods, such
as Newton's method. However, fast quadratic convergence is typically only
obtained in a local neighborhood of the solution, and for many configurations,
the classical Newton iteration does not converge at all. In such cases,
so-called globalization techniques may help to improve convergence.
  In this paper, pseudo-transient continuation is employed in order to improve
nonlinear convergence. The classical algorithm is enhanced by a neural network
model that is trained to predict a local pseudo-time step. Generalization of
the novel approach is facilitated by predicting the local pseudo-time step
separately on each element using only local information on a patch of adjacent
elements as input. Numerical results for standard benchmark problems, including
flow through a backward facing step geometry and Couette flow, show the
performance of the machine learning-enhanced globalization approach; as the
software for the simulations, the CFD module of COMSOL Multiphysics is
employed.