Preconditioned Adjoint Data Assimilation for Two-Dimensional Decaying Isotropic Turbulence

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Ke, Hongyi, You, Zejian, Wang, Qi
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Ke, Hongyi
You, Zejian
Wang, Qi
author_facet Ke, Hongyi
You, Zejian
Wang, Qi
contents Adjoint-based data assimilation for turbulent Navier-Stokes flows is fundamentally limited by the behavior of the adjoint dynamics: in backward time, adjoint fields exhibit exponential growth and become increasingly dominated by small-scale structures, severely degrading reconstruction of the initial condition from sparse measurements. We demonstrate that the relative weighting of spectral components in the adjoint formulation can be systematically controlled by redefining the inner product under which the adjoint operator is defined. The inverse problem is formulated as a constrained minimization in which a cost functional measures the mismatch between model predictions and observations, and the adjoint equations provide the gradient with respect to the initial velocity field. Redefining the forward-adjoint duality through a Fourier-space weighting kernel preconditions the optimization and is mathematically equivalent to changing the representation of the control variable or, alternatively, introducing a smoothing operation on the governing dynamics. Specific kernel choices correspond to fractional integration or diffusion operators applied to the initial condition. Among these, exponential kernels provide effective regularization by suppressing high-wavenumber contributions while preserving large-scale coherence, leading to improved reconstruction across scales. A statistical analysis of an ensemble of adjoint fields from different turbulent realizations reveals scale-dependent backward growth rates, explaining the instability of the standard formulation and clarifying the mechanism by which the proposed preconditioning attenuates incoherent small-scale amplification.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_14016
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Preconditioned Adjoint Data Assimilation for Two-Dimensional Decaying Isotropic Turbulence
Ke, Hongyi
You, Zejian
Wang, Qi
Fluid Dynamics
76F05, 76M21, 76D55
Adjoint-based data assimilation for turbulent Navier-Stokes flows is fundamentally limited by the behavior of the adjoint dynamics: in backward time, adjoint fields exhibit exponential growth and become increasingly dominated by small-scale structures, severely degrading reconstruction of the initial condition from sparse measurements. We demonstrate that the relative weighting of spectral components in the adjoint formulation can be systematically controlled by redefining the inner product under which the adjoint operator is defined. The inverse problem is formulated as a constrained minimization in which a cost functional measures the mismatch between model predictions and observations, and the adjoint equations provide the gradient with respect to the initial velocity field. Redefining the forward-adjoint duality through a Fourier-space weighting kernel preconditions the optimization and is mathematically equivalent to changing the representation of the control variable or, alternatively, introducing a smoothing operation on the governing dynamics. Specific kernel choices correspond to fractional integration or diffusion operators applied to the initial condition. Among these, exponential kernels provide effective regularization by suppressing high-wavenumber contributions while preserving large-scale coherence, leading to improved reconstruction across scales. A statistical analysis of an ensemble of adjoint fields from different turbulent realizations reveals scale-dependent backward growth rates, explaining the instability of the standard formulation and clarifying the mechanism by which the proposed preconditioning attenuates incoherent small-scale amplification.
title Preconditioned Adjoint Data Assimilation for Two-Dimensional Decaying Isotropic Turbulence
topic Fluid Dynamics
76F05, 76M21, 76D55
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.14016