Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Murari, Krishna
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.18328
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866908900222042112
author Murari, Krishna
author_facet Murari, Krishna
contents Physics-Informed Neural Networks(PINNs) are a powerful and flexible learning framework that has gained significant attention in recent years. It has demonstrated strong performance across a wide range of scientific and engineering problems. In parallel, wavelets have been extensively used as efficient computational tools due to their strong approximation capabilities. Motivated by the common failure modes observed in standard PINNs, this work introduces a novel family of adaptive wavelet-based activation functions. The proposed activation functions significantly improve training stability and expressive power by combining trainable wavelet functions with either trainable or fixed hyperbolic tangent and softplus functions. Five distinct activation functions are developed within the PINN framework and systematically evaluated across four representative classes of partial differential equations (PDEs). Comprehensive comparisons using bar plots demonstrate improved robustness and accuracy compared to traditional activation functions. Furthermore, the proposed approach is validated through direct comparisons with baseline PINNs, transformer-based architectures such as PINNsFormer, and other deep learning models, highlighting its effectiveness and generality.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_18328
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Family of Adaptive Activation Functions for Mitigating Failure Modes in Physics-Informed Neural Networks
Murari, Krishna
Machine Learning
Physics-Informed Neural Networks(PINNs) are a powerful and flexible learning framework that has gained significant attention in recent years. It has demonstrated strong performance across a wide range of scientific and engineering problems. In parallel, wavelets have been extensively used as efficient computational tools due to their strong approximation capabilities. Motivated by the common failure modes observed in standard PINNs, this work introduces a novel family of adaptive wavelet-based activation functions. The proposed activation functions significantly improve training stability and expressive power by combining trainable wavelet functions with either trainable or fixed hyperbolic tangent and softplus functions. Five distinct activation functions are developed within the PINN framework and systematically evaluated across four representative classes of partial differential equations (PDEs). Comprehensive comparisons using bar plots demonstrate improved robustness and accuracy compared to traditional activation functions. Furthermore, the proposed approach is validated through direct comparisons with baseline PINNs, transformer-based architectures such as PINNsFormer, and other deep learning models, highlighting its effectiveness and generality.
title A Family of Adaptive Activation Functions for Mitigating Failure Modes in Physics-Informed Neural Networks
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.18328