Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

B-PINNs: Bayesian Physics-informal Neural Networks for Forward and Inverse PDE Problems with Noisy Data

Journal Article · · Journal of Computational Physics

We propose a Bayesian physics-informed neural network (B-PINN) to solve both forward and inverse nonlinear problems described by partial differential equations (PDEs) and noisy data. In this Bayesian framework, the Bayesian neural network (BNN) combined with a PINN for PDEs serves as the prior while the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) or the variational inference (VI) could serve as an estimator of the posterior. B-PINNs make use of both physical laws and scattered noisy measurements to provide predictions and quantify the aleatoric uncertainty arising from the noisy data in the Bayesian framework. Compared with PINNs, in addition to uncertainty quantification, B-PINNs obtain more accurate predictions in scenarios with large noise due to their capability of avoiding overfitting. We conduct a systematic comparison between the two different approaches for the B-PINNs posterior estimation (i.e., HMC or VI), along with dropout used for quantifying uncertainty in deep neural networks. Our experiments show that HMC is more suitable than VI with mean field Gaussian approximation for the B-PINNs posterior estimation, while dropout employed in PINNs can hardly provide accurate predictions with reasonable uncertainty. Finally, we replace the BNN in the prior with a truncated Karhunen-Loève (KL) expansion combined with HMC or a deep normalizing flow (DNF) model as posterior estimators. The KL is as accurate as BNN and much faster but this framework cannot be easily extended to high-dimensional problems unlike the BNN based framework.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1763962
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-158354
Journal Information:
Journal of Computational Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Computational Physics Vol. 425
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (14)

Machine learning of linear differential equations using Gaussian processes journal November 2017
Quantifying total uncertainty in physics-informed neural networks for solving forward and inverse stochastic problems journal November 2019
Data-driven discovery of PDEs in complex datasets journal May 2019
Weight Uncertainty in Neural Networks preprint January 2015
Deep learning journal May 2015
Data-driven discovery of partial differential equations journal April 2017
A composite neural network that learns from multi-fidelity data: Application to function approximation and inverse PDE problems journal January 2020
Adaptive Construction of Surrogates for the Bayesian Solution of Inverse Problems journal January 2014
Physics-Informed Generative Adversarial Networks for Stochastic Differential Equations journal January 2020
Bayesian deep learning with hierarchical prior: Predictions from limited and noisy data journal May 2020
Adaptive multi-fidelity polynomial chaos approach to Bayesian inference in inverse problems journal March 2019
Inferring solutions of differential equations using noisy multi-fidelity data journal April 2017
Physics-informed neural networks: A deep learning framework for solving forward and inverse problems involving nonlinear partial differential equations journal February 2019
Neural-net-induced Gaussian process regression for function approximation and PDE solution journal May 2019

Cited By (4)


Similar Records

B-PINNs: Bayesian physics-informed neural networks for forward and inverse PDE problems with noisy data
Journal Article · Thu Oct 15 00:00:00 EDT 2020 · Journal of Computational Physics · OSTI ID:2282008

Karhunen–Loève deep learning method for surrogate modeling and approximate Bayesian parameter estimation
Journal Article · Mon Jun 16 00:00:00 EDT 2025 · Advances in Water Resources · OSTI ID:2570716

Multi-fidelity Bayesian neural networks: Algorithms and applications
Journal Article · Fri Apr 16 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · Journal of Computational Physics · OSTI ID:2281996