Rotational and Reflectional Equivariant Convolutional Neural Network for data-limited applications: Multiphase Flow demonstration

Abstract: This article deals with approximating steady-state particle-resolved fluid flow around a fixed particle of interest under the influence of randomly distributed stationary particles in a dispersed multiphase setup using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The considered problem involves rotational symmetry about the mean velocity (streamwise) direction. Thus, this work enforces this symmetry using $\mathbf{\textbf{SE(3)-equivariant}}$, special Euclidean group of dimension 3, CNN architecture, which is translation and three-dimensional rotation equivariant. This study mainly explores the generalization capabilities and benefits of SE(3)-equivariant network. Accurate synthetic flow fields for Reynolds number and particle volume fraction combinations spanning over a range of [86.22, 172.96] and [0.11, 0.45] respectively are produced with careful application of symmetry-aware data-driven approach.