Learning to Solve Optimization Problems Constrained with Partial Differential Equations

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Guven, Yusuf, Di Vito, Vincenzo, Fioretto, Ferdinando
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Guven, Yusuf
Di Vito, Vincenzo
Fioretto, Ferdinando
author_facet Guven, Yusuf
Di Vito, Vincenzo
Fioretto, Ferdinando
contents Partial differential equation (PDE)-constrained optimization arises in many scientific and engineering domains, such as energy systems, fluid dynamics and material design. In these problems, the decision variables (e.g., control inputs or design parameters) are tightly coupled with the PDE state variables, and the feasible set is implicitly defined by the governing PDE constraints. This coupling makes the problems computationally demanding, as it requires handling high dimensional discretization and dynamic constraints. To address these challenges, this paper introduces a learning-based framework that integrates a dynamic predictor with an optimization surrogate. The dynamic predictor, a novel time-discrete Neural Operator (Lu et al.), efficiently approximate system trajectories governed by PDE dynamics, while the optimization surrogate leverages proxy optimizer techniques (Kotary et al.) to approximate the associated optimal decisions. This dual-network design enables real-time approximation of optimal strategies while explicitly capturing the coupling between decisions and PDE dynamics. We validate the proposed approach on benchmark PDE-constrained optimization tasks inlacing Burgers' equation, heat equation and voltage regulation, and demonstrate that it achieves solution quality comparable to classical control-based algorithms, such as the Direct Method and Model Predictive Control (MPC), while providing up to four orders of magnitude improvement in computational speed.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_24573
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Learning to Solve Optimization Problems Constrained with Partial Differential Equations
Guven, Yusuf
Di Vito, Vincenzo
Fioretto, Ferdinando
Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
Partial differential equation (PDE)-constrained optimization arises in many scientific and engineering domains, such as energy systems, fluid dynamics and material design. In these problems, the decision variables (e.g., control inputs or design parameters) are tightly coupled with the PDE state variables, and the feasible set is implicitly defined by the governing PDE constraints. This coupling makes the problems computationally demanding, as it requires handling high dimensional discretization and dynamic constraints. To address these challenges, this paper introduces a learning-based framework that integrates a dynamic predictor with an optimization surrogate. The dynamic predictor, a novel time-discrete Neural Operator (Lu et al.), efficiently approximate system trajectories governed by PDE dynamics, while the optimization surrogate leverages proxy optimizer techniques (Kotary et al.) to approximate the associated optimal decisions. This dual-network design enables real-time approximation of optimal strategies while explicitly capturing the coupling between decisions and PDE dynamics. We validate the proposed approach on benchmark PDE-constrained optimization tasks inlacing Burgers' equation, heat equation and voltage regulation, and demonstrate that it achieves solution quality comparable to classical control-based algorithms, such as the Direct Method and Model Predictive Control (MPC), while providing up to four orders of magnitude improvement in computational speed.
title Learning to Solve Optimization Problems Constrained with Partial Differential Equations
topic Machine Learning
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24573