Physics-Constrained Bayesian Neural Network for Fluid Flow Reconstruction with Sparse and Noisy Data

Abstract: In many applications, flow measurements are usually sparse and possibly noisy. The reconstruction of a high-resolution flow field from limited and imperfect flow information is significant yet challenging. In this work, we propose an innovative physics-constrained Bayesian deep learning approach to reconstruct flow fields from sparse, noisy velocity data, where equation-based constraints are imposed through the likelihood function and uncertainty of the reconstructed flow can be estimated. Specifically, a Bayesian deep neural network is trained on sparse measurement data to capture the flow field. In the meantime, the violation of physical laws will be penalized on a large number of spatiotemporal points where measurements are not available. A non-parametric variational inference approach is applied to enable efficient physics-constrained Bayesian learning. Several test cases on idealized vascular flows with synthetic measurement data are studied to demonstrate the merit of the proposed method.