Reducing the Sensitivity of Neural Physics Simulators to Mesh Topology via Pretraining

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Vaska, Nathan, Goodwin, Justin, Walters, Robin, Caceres, Rajmonda S.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866916568574722048
author Vaska, Nathan
Goodwin, Justin
Walters, Robin
Caceres, Rajmonda S.
author_facet Vaska, Nathan
Goodwin, Justin
Walters, Robin
Caceres, Rajmonda S.
contents Meshes are used to represent complex objects in high fidelity physics simulators across a variety of domains, such as radar sensing and aerodynamics. There is growing interest in using neural networks to accelerate physics simulations, and also a growing body of work on applying neural networks directly to irregular mesh data. Since multiple mesh topologies can represent the same object, mesh augmentation is typically required to handle topological variation when training neural networks. Due to the sensitivity of physics simulators to small changes in mesh shape, it is challenging to use these augmentations when training neural network-based physics simulators. In this work, we show that variations in mesh topology can significantly reduce the performance of neural network simulators. We evaluate whether pretraining can be used to address this issue, and find that employing an established autoencoder pretraining technique with graph embedding models reduces the sensitivity of neural network simulators to variations in mesh topology. Finally, we highlight future research directions that may further reduce neural simulator sensitivity to mesh topology.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_09597
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Reducing the Sensitivity of Neural Physics Simulators to Mesh Topology via Pretraining
Vaska, Nathan
Goodwin, Justin
Walters, Robin
Caceres, Rajmonda S.
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.6; I.2.10
Meshes are used to represent complex objects in high fidelity physics simulators across a variety of domains, such as radar sensing and aerodynamics. There is growing interest in using neural networks to accelerate physics simulations, and also a growing body of work on applying neural networks directly to irregular mesh data. Since multiple mesh topologies can represent the same object, mesh augmentation is typically required to handle topological variation when training neural networks. Due to the sensitivity of physics simulators to small changes in mesh shape, it is challenging to use these augmentations when training neural network-based physics simulators. In this work, we show that variations in mesh topology can significantly reduce the performance of neural network simulators. We evaluate whether pretraining can be used to address this issue, and find that employing an established autoencoder pretraining technique with graph embedding models reduces the sensitivity of neural network simulators to variations in mesh topology. Finally, we highlight future research directions that may further reduce neural simulator sensitivity to mesh topology.
title Reducing the Sensitivity of Neural Physics Simulators to Mesh Topology via Pretraining
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.6; I.2.10
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.09597