Hybrid Neural Ordinary Differential Equations for Data-Efficient Polymerization Modeling with Incomplete Kinetics

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Hauptverfasser: Almanasreh, Marah, Mitsos, Alexander, Cramer, Eike
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Almanasreh, Marah
Mitsos, Alexander
Cramer, Eike
author_facet Almanasreh, Marah
Mitsos, Alexander
Cramer, Eike
contents Accurate prediction of polymerization dynamics is essential for process design, control, and optimization. Yet, purely mechanistic models require labor-intensive parameterization of partially characterized kinetics, while purely data-driven models demand large, diverse datasets that are costly to obtain, particularly in early-design stages. We propose a hybrid Neural Ordinary Differential Equation (NODE) framework for data-efficient modeling of free-radical polymerization. Using batch polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) as a case study, the mechanistic mass balances are retained explicitly, and only the partially-characterized effective radical concentration governing monomer consumption is learned from data through a neural network surrogate, while established reactions such as initiator decomposition, propagation, and termination remain physically modeled. The hybrid NODE is evaluated against a discrete-time feedforward neural network and a purely data-driven NODE under sparse data conditions, with models trained on as few as ten measurements under both regular and irregular sampling. The hybrid NODE consistently achieves lower prediction errors and more physically consistent extrapolations than both purely data-driven baselines. In a generalization scenario with noisy data and unseen operating conditions, the hybrid NODE achieves an RMSE of 0.013, compared to 0.31 for the data-driven NODE and 0.68 for the discrete-time model, demonstrating that learning only a closure term rather than the full dynamics is sufficient for reliable prediction under limited data availability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2606_02145
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hybrid Neural Ordinary Differential Equations for Data-Efficient Polymerization Modeling with Incomplete Kinetics
Almanasreh, Marah
Mitsos, Alexander
Cramer, Eike
Machine Learning
Accurate prediction of polymerization dynamics is essential for process design, control, and optimization. Yet, purely mechanistic models require labor-intensive parameterization of partially characterized kinetics, while purely data-driven models demand large, diverse datasets that are costly to obtain, particularly in early-design stages. We propose a hybrid Neural Ordinary Differential Equation (NODE) framework for data-efficient modeling of free-radical polymerization. Using batch polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) as a case study, the mechanistic mass balances are retained explicitly, and only the partially-characterized effective radical concentration governing monomer consumption is learned from data through a neural network surrogate, while established reactions such as initiator decomposition, propagation, and termination remain physically modeled. The hybrid NODE is evaluated against a discrete-time feedforward neural network and a purely data-driven NODE under sparse data conditions, with models trained on as few as ten measurements under both regular and irregular sampling. The hybrid NODE consistently achieves lower prediction errors and more physically consistent extrapolations than both purely data-driven baselines. In a generalization scenario with noisy data and unseen operating conditions, the hybrid NODE achieves an RMSE of 0.013, compared to 0.31 for the data-driven NODE and 0.68 for the discrete-time model, demonstrating that learning only a closure term rather than the full dynamics is sufficient for reliable prediction under limited data availability.
title Hybrid Neural Ordinary Differential Equations for Data-Efficient Polymerization Modeling with Incomplete Kinetics
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.02145