2 DEEP NURBS—ADMISSIBLE PHYSICS-INFORMED NEURAL NETWORKS
recognition [4, 5]. With the exception of a few studies, the application of machine learning (ML) along
with neural networks (NNs) in general, in particular to scientific problems, was not as structured as in the
previous topics (for example [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]).
Among these few efforts was the seminal work of Lagaris [6], who applied very simplistic NN models
to solve several ordinary and partial differential equations (PDEs) of different orders (the accuracy was
order-dependent though). This concept has been revived very recently by many researchers [12, 13, 14, 15]
who used a very similar concept and coined it as ”physics-informed neural networks (PINNs)” (two such
examples were deep Ritz and deep Galerkin for the last two references, respectively). Since then, PINNs
have gained considerable fame because of their simple implementation and their concept that allows for a
combination of NNs and the already established theories. PINNs have enabled the shift to the unsupervised
ML scheme owing to the laws and constraints implemented within its framework. Targeting the solution of
PDEs, PINNs have been proven to be very efficient for many complicated and challenging problems ([16, 17])
and for different types of PDEs. Furthermore, the convenience of the accompanying sampling methods made
it adequate for problems with high-dimensional domains. Because PINNs have been specifically proposed
for methods that consider the collocation points as training data with a discrete loss term; note that other
variants relying on the same principle coexisted, e.g., deep Ritz [14, 18] and deep Galerkin [15]. The first
method uses the weak form of the PDE in which the variational problem (energy minimization) can be
solved using stochastic optimizers and Monte Carlo sampling techniques. In the deep Galerkin scheme, the
gradients have been taken care of using a tailored stochastic approach.
Many variations have been proposed and proven to be effective in specific cases, in addition to these
three primary methods. Inverse problems have been tackled using stochastic differential equations (SDEs)
in this reference [19]. Lu et al. [20] proposed a method for learning non-linear operators, while Cai et
al. [16] have implemented a modified version of PINNs to infer electroconvection in multiphysics systems.
A comprehensive review on ML for fluid mechanics is presented in [21]. The mathematical formulation of
PINNs has been discussed in certain relevant studies from an uncertainty quantification perspective. Mishra
et al. [22] provided an estimate for its generalization error. They primarily provided bounds for PINNs
based on quadrature and random sampling based-PINNs. Fang et al. [23] established convergence rates for
the NNs-based PDE solver. To develop an approximation for the derivatives, they combined the NNs and
the differential operator (as it is used in Finite element methods).
As a trend in applying ML tools to scientific and engineering problems, we naturally wonder what makes
PINNs and their variants (deep Ritz and deep Galerkin) as efficient and vulnerable as they are (or considered
to be). To address this question, one should examine what makes these methods different from answering
this question. Surely its simple concept makes it easy to implement, particularly for complicated tasks in
which simplicity plays an important role in its success. One has to admit that the nature of its loss function,
which incorporates the system’s physical laws, has to do with its convergence rate to the sought solution.
The auto-differentiation, being an exact, differentiating tool, is, in turn, at the heart of PINNs success.
However, PINNs have observed many limitations when it comes to problems with discontinuities and
computationally demanding problems [14]. These problems are very demanding in terms of NN depth and
computational work; the latter two aspects make the PINNs usage challenging. From this perspective, one
might question what has to change to allow PINNs to cope with discontinuities without being extremely
expensive. Is it the way the loss function is presented (weak form [14, 18] or strong form [12]), or is it related
to the way the gradients are calculated (entirely auto-differentiation - based or hybrid [23]). If we examine
the previous references, one can conclude that none of the previous aspects is important in mitigating the
complexity of the NN architecture.
Shin et al. [24] demonstrated the sequence of minimizers generated in the stochastic optimization of
PINNs strongly converges to the solution of the PDE in C0. However, if the boundary conditions are satis-
fied, the minimizers converge to the sought solution in H1instead of C0. This insight has been supported
by recent works [25, 13] and genuinely by the original work of Lagaris [6]. The Lagaris approach was to
use functions that naturally fulfill the boundary conditions. Although this approach proved to be compu-
tationally very efficient, in terms of accuracy, this approach is not practical regarding complex geometries
with non-homogeneous boundaries. From this last point, we follow the concept described in Lagaris’ paper.
Nevertheless, we use admissible (in the sense of calculus of variations, that is, satisfying the boundary condi-
tions) non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) parameterizations, which are similarly used in IsoGeometric
Analysis, as an efficient approach to impose Dirichlet boundary conditions. To our knowledge, our work