Replay-Based Continual Learning for Physics-Informed Neural Operators

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Wang, Yizheng, Eshaghi, Mohammad Sadegh, Zhuang, Xiaoying, Rabczuk, Timon, Liu, Yinghua
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Wang, Yizheng
Eshaghi, Mohammad Sadegh
Zhuang, Xiaoying
Rabczuk, Timon
Liu, Yinghua
author_facet Wang, Yizheng
Eshaghi, Mohammad Sadegh
Zhuang, Xiaoying
Rabczuk, Timon
Liu, Yinghua
contents Neural operators generally demonstrate strong predictive performance on in-distribution (ID) problems. However, a critical limitation of existing methods is their significant performance degradation when encountering out-of-distribution (OOD) data. To address this issue, this work introduces continual learning into physics-informed neural operators, with particular emphasis on neural operators built upon the Transolver architecture, and proposes a simple yet effective replay-based continual learning strategy. The proposed method is fully physics-informed and does not require labeled data, relying solely on input fields together with physical constraints for training. When new OOD data become available, a small number of past data are incorporated through a distillation-based constraint to preserve previously acquired knowledge and alleviate catastrophic forgetting. Meanwhile, a transfer learning LoRA is employed to enable rapid adaptation to the new data. The proposed framework is systematically validated on three representative physical problems, including the Darcy flow problem in fluid mechanics, a two-dimensional hyperelastic brain tumor problem in biomechanics, and a three-dimensional linear elastic Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces problem in solid mechanics. The results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively mitigates catastrophic forgetting on previously learned data while maintaining fast adaptability to new data. Compared with conventional joint training strategies, the proposed method significantly improves training efficiency while reducing additional memory usage and computational cost.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_04832
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Replay-Based Continual Learning for Physics-Informed Neural Operators
Wang, Yizheng
Eshaghi, Mohammad Sadegh
Zhuang, Xiaoying
Rabczuk, Timon
Liu, Yinghua
Machine Learning
Neural operators generally demonstrate strong predictive performance on in-distribution (ID) problems. However, a critical limitation of existing methods is their significant performance degradation when encountering out-of-distribution (OOD) data. To address this issue, this work introduces continual learning into physics-informed neural operators, with particular emphasis on neural operators built upon the Transolver architecture, and proposes a simple yet effective replay-based continual learning strategy. The proposed method is fully physics-informed and does not require labeled data, relying solely on input fields together with physical constraints for training. When new OOD data become available, a small number of past data are incorporated through a distillation-based constraint to preserve previously acquired knowledge and alleviate catastrophic forgetting. Meanwhile, a transfer learning LoRA is employed to enable rapid adaptation to the new data. The proposed framework is systematically validated on three representative physical problems, including the Darcy flow problem in fluid mechanics, a two-dimensional hyperelastic brain tumor problem in biomechanics, and a three-dimensional linear elastic Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces problem in solid mechanics. The results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively mitigates catastrophic forgetting on previously learned data while maintaining fast adaptability to new data. Compared with conventional joint training strategies, the proposed method significantly improves training efficiency while reducing additional memory usage and computational cost.
title Replay-Based Continual Learning for Physics-Informed Neural Operators
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.04832