“Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Learning Subgrid-Scale Turbulent Fluxes in Large-Eddy Simulation of Atmospheric Boundary Layer”

https://doi-002.org/1018/17587853099072

Junyu Cai1† and Linfan Zhou1†,Wendong Jiang2*,Huafeng Luo1,Jiajia Han1*,Ronghao Liu1,Ying Yao1

1.State Grid Zhejiang Electric Power Co., Ltd. Electric Power Research Institute.

2.State Grid Zhejiang Electric Power Co., Ltd. Extra High Voltage Branch

†These authors contributed equally to this work and share first authorship

Corresponding Author: Wendong Jiang2*and Jiajia Han1*

caijunyu888@163.com ，458208470@qq.com ，jwd78@163.com ， luohuafeng2014@126.com ，gaga_Karen@163.com ，liuronghao15@mails.ucas.ac.cn ，yao_ying@zj.sgcc.com.cn

First author: Cai Junyu，caijunyu888@163.com

Corresponding author: Han Jiajia，gaga_Karen@163.com

Abstract

The work aims to study the possibility of using Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) to describe subgrid-scale (SGS) turbulent fluxes in Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL). The accuracy of PINNs in predicting the momentum, heat, and mass fluxes is compared to the accuracy of the popular traditional SGS models, i.e., the Smagorinsky and Dynamic models. The findings indicate that PINNs are always more accurate than the traditional models and perform better in terms of R-squared and lower Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), denoting physical consistency. Nevertheless, along with other benefits, PINNs are much more expensive computationally and take much longer to train, thus not being as applicable in real time. The results indicate that though PINNs have a better predictive power, its application in the real-world must carefully take into consideration the computational complexity when an organization is engaging in simulations that are large and that involve massive data. Further studies are required to solve the computation task and consider the hybrid PINNs-traditional SGS models balance to achieve the best possible accuracy and efficiency.

Keywords Physics-Informed Neural Networks, Subgrid-Scale Modeling, Large-Eddy Simulation, Atmospheric Boundary Layer, Turbulence Modeling, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Machine Learning, SGS Fluxes, RMSE, R-squared, Dynamic Model, Smagorinsky Model, Turbulent Flux Prediction

Introduction

The Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) is an important zone of the atmosphere which has direct connection with the surface of the earth that affects the weather patterns, dynamics of climate and air quality. The more realistic the simulation of ABL turbulence would be, the more of such applications it would support to benefits weather prediction, environmental monitoring, and even the development of urban areas. The ABL and in particular the near-surface region is dominated by a complex turbulence that can only be captured by using sophisticated modelling techniques like Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) that resolves larger scales and model the smaller scales. None the less, the quality of LES is very sensitive to the modeling of the subgrid scale (SGS) turbulent fluxes that represent the incomplete turbulence motions inside grid cells of the simulation (Germano et al., 1991).

In LES, the large-scale eddies are directly solved, whereas the small-scale turbulence that cannot be captured computationally is replaced by models of SGS. The SGS turbulent fluxes would normally consist of momentum fluxes, heat fluxes and mass fluxes that play a great role in dictating the turbulence characterizations in ABL. These fluxes have been represented by using traditional models of SGS, e.g. Smagorinsky model (Smagorinsky, 1963) or more advanced dynamic models (Meneveau et al., 1996). However, these models are useful in some settings and can be empirically parameterized and based on subjective assumptions of turbulence that are not in the real sense representative of real life. There has emerged a need to develop more correct, flexible, and physically consistent SGS models as a consequence.

Recent developments in ML, especially deep learning and neural networks, have turned up fresh opportunities to model SGS turbulently fluxes. These pattern based methods may have the potential of inferring complicated interdependencies between large scale parameters and SGS transports without preconceived empirical relations. Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) have also become a method of great interest in modeling turbulence. PINNs combine the combinatory of deep learning with the ability to violate the physics by integrating physical equations into the training itself, rather than simply being learned in the data (Raissi et al., 2019). With the physical knowledge in the designs of the neural network, PINNs have become able to learn SGS fluxes satisfying the laws of fluid dynamics which are conservation of momentum and energy, even when trained with limited data.

The application of Physics-Informed Neural Networks in the realm of fluid mechanics has been effective in the calculation of the partial differential equations (PDEs) of the turbulence and the heat transfer issues (Raissi et al., 2019; Lu et al., 2021). They have unfortunately not yet made their way into LES and SGS modeling in the ABL. The most significant driving force behind this study is to determine the feasibility of training PINNs to estimate SGS turbulent fluxes to improve LES of the ABL thus offering a more accurate and adaptable alternative to SGS models. This approach is likely to be more superior to the traditional approach because it applies to various conditions of flow and it captures the non-linear interdependencies between different large-scale variables and SGS fluxes.

Deep neural networks and other forms of machine learning models have shown promise in learning turbulent fluxes in LES. These models have been employed to model cancellation of the nonlinear terms in the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations and have been proved to be promising in the defence of turbulence (Duraisamy et al., 2019; Ling et al., 2016). Nevertheless, it is difficult to incorporate physical constraints during training because most machine learning models are infamously accused of being unexplainable and impractical because they cannot guarantee compliance with known physical conditions. To overcome this problem, PINNs integrate the physical constraints into the loss term of the neural network training (Raissi et al., 2019).

PINN modeling has a number of benefits when applied to the modeling of SGS. First, PINNs can be trained with sparse data, a fact which makes them an appealing method when large, resolution-dense datasets do not exist or cannot be implemented conveniently (Zhang et al., 2020). Second, PINNs can have the potential to enhance generalization of SGS models over a large domain of flow conditions, without manual parameter selection of empirical parameters. Lastly, PINNs promise to provide real-time simulation, with the ability to change the model based on new flow conditions that do not need time-consuming model updates (Zhang et al., 2021).

In spite of the great promise of PINNs, there are a number of issues that need to be tackled. The computational expense of such a modelling is one of the key issues, where operating on large-scale data sets, such as that of the ABL, is involved (Karniadakis et al., 2021). Also, although PINNs have been successful in ideal flows, it has yet to be seen how they can perform in realistic atmospheric flows with huge variations of the turbulence. In order to tackle these issues, the present study attempts to investigate the use of PINNs to learn the SGS fluxes in LES of the ABL in the hope of enhancing the flexibility and precision of SGS models.

In this research, we will formulate a PINN-based methodology to learn SGS turbulent fluxes in LES computations of ABL. The comparison of the PINN model performance with the traditional SGS models, i.e., the Smagorinsky model and the dynamic model, will be made in order to determine the enhancement of simulation accuracy. The proposed work takes advantage of the strength deep learning and the physics of this fluid by instilling constraints on fluid physics to create a more stable and efficient method of simulating turbulent flows in the ABL to eventually aid in better weather prediction and climate and environmental research.

Literature Review

The modeling of turbulence and its study is a very important part of the study of fluid dynamics, particularly in the domain of atmospheric modeling like the atmospheric boundary layer or ABL. In large-eddy simulations (LES), turbulence is considered to be a multi-scale problem, the large eddies are resolved, but the smaller ones are instantaneously modeled as a subgrid-scale (SGS) turbulent flux. Proper modeling of these SGS fluxes is essential in making improvements in the predictive capabilities of LES. This is part of an essay paper where I evaluate the research and progress being made in sub grid-scale turbulence modeling especially that of machine learning and in particular Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) and their application in advancing LES in the ABL.

Turbulence Modeling in Large-Eddy Simulations

Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) is a popular method of computation which is applied to different problems of turbulent flows, climate modeling, and weather forecasting as well as the dynamics of the atmospheric boundary layer (Pope, 2000). LES recovers the large scale turbulent motions and structures, which are usually large scales not well resolved in the grid, whereas the small scale based on which the large scales are modeled. The major challenge of LES is appropriate modeling of the unresolved scales that is modeled with SGS models. The models strive to embody the impacts of the sub-grid-scale turbulence on the computed resolvable flow fields and essence of delivering correctness in the flow fields of turbulence in the ABL.

The most popular SGS models applied in LES are of phenomenological nature. An example is the Smagorinsky model, (Smagorinsky, 1963) that adds constant operator of turbulent viscosity as a model of SGS fluxes, that has been a stepping-stone in LES. Nevertheless, it has weaknesses due to its inability to adjust to different flow conditions and therefore it needs continuous tuning of an ad-hoc nature (Meneveau, 1997). In an attempt to increase the flexibility of the model, there has been the development of dynamic models. The dynamic Smagorinsky model (Meneveau et al., 1996 ) is one of such models as the dynamic coefficient of such models is calculated during simulations and in this way makes such models more adaptable to various conditions of turbulent nature.

Regardless of these improvements in dynamic modelling, the traditional SGS models are intrinsically inadequate to describe the entire extent of the turbulence dynamics, particularly in highly inhomogeneous and anisotropic flows, such as those in the ABL. Such observations have compelled researchers to think about data-based methods of modeling SGS using machine learning (ML) to learn the dynamics of SGS fluxes given resolved flow fields experimentally inferred via numerical simulations.

Machine Learning for Turbulence Modeling

Machine learning has also been given serious consideration in the field of fluid dynamics due to its capability of capturing the responses of non-linear and complex relationships between input variables and turbulent fluxes. In particular, ANN techniques, including deep learning methods have been researched in terms of turbulence modelling. These models have the ability to learn on high dimensional data and recent studies have found that they performed well in predicting turbulence compared to traditional models (Ling et al., 2016; Duraisamy et al., 2019).

The main benefit of using machine learning models is the flexibility to work under changing flow conditions without fine tuning which is a great shortcoming of SGS models. DNNs have also been used to obtain improved wind energy methods to model the Reynolds stress tensor in turbulence closure terms in articles based on RANS equations (Duraisamy et al., 2019). Such methods make use of large amounts of data programmed by Jacobian-matrices obtained by very high fidelity computations on which the model is trained, and the neural network absorbs the non-linear behaviour between the flow variables.

The problem with the fluid dynamics application of machine learning is the need to ascertain physical consistency in the model. The physical laws that apply in the study of fluids (i.e., conservation of mass and energy) are not enforced by standard neural networks and thus can be violated (Raissi et al., 2019). To address this issue, the concept of Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) has been proposed, whereby a certain physical condition is embodied into the process of learning in the neural network.

Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) in Fluid Mechanics

Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) are a type of neural network that attempts to honor the physical laws by incorporating them into the same function of loss during training. The method provides the discovered solutions not only through fitting the data but also meeting the physical fundamental equations governing the fluid dynamics, e.g., partial differential equations (PDEs) (Raissi et al., 2019). As far as nonlinear PDEs are concerned, the successful application of PINNs can be observed in forward or inverse problems, and it is applicable in various engineering fields, such as fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and wave propagation (Lu et al., 2021).

When applied to the problem of turbulence modeling, PINNs have a potential to become an alternative to the conventional SGS models as they can learn SGS fluxes based on LES data and satisfy the Navier-Stokes equations and other pertinent physical principles. The concept is that by involving physical knowledge, PINNs are able to generalize much better across varied flow regimes and can make predictions of SGS fluxes that are more accurate, even in highly complex turbulent flows like that found in the ABL.

Only the very rudimentary applications of PINNs to turbulence modeling have been developed, but the initial results are encouraging. Zhou et al. (2020) showed that PINNs could be effectively employed in predicting turbulent fluxes in simple flow problems, and that these methods are much more accurate and efficient than classical modelling. In the same vein, Piacentini et al. (2020) has used PINNs to predict subgrid- scale closures in turbulent channel flows and recorded significant improvement compared to traditional model of turbulence. The above studies suggest that PINNs can not only describe the complexity of turbulence but also learn how to simulate various flow regimes, which is paramount in LES of the ABL.

Challenges and Future Directions

Although these results are encouraging, there are some issues associated with the application of PINNs to the LES and SGS modeling. The large number of parameters PINNs used can be computationally expensive, especially with large-scale datasets. Training deep neural networks is a resource-intensive process and the inclusion of the physical constraint can make the optimization problem more difficult (Karniadakis et al., 2021). Also, the model could be vulnerable to the quality of the input data, even though it can be trained (or guided) with rather small datasets, and further research is necessary to identify the conditions under which the model would require.

In addition, PINNs have performed well on idealized cases and simple flows but have yet to be fully validated in complex, real-world flows within the ABL. The fact that the nature of turbulence, including both anisotropy and inhomogeneity, varies across atmospheric conditions also makes it more difficult to train PINNs to work with different conditions (Zhang et al., 2020).

Nevertheless, the opportunities that PINNs offer to turbulence modeling cannot be underestimated, and future efforts will have to be put into addressing the issues that are currently present. The following areas are areas that should be worked on to enhance the efficiency of PINNs, optimize training processes, and use them in more advanced and realistic settings. Also, it could be interesting to combine more traditional SGS models with PINNs so that they can be used together to their advantage.

Machine Learning in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer

ABL is a complex turbulent flow that is especially significant when approaching the surface because it has strong dynamics due to interaction between the atmosphere and the surface of the earth. The traditional SGS models (like Smagorinsky model) have been applied in LES to model the small-scale turbulence features though these models can not properly capture the effects of turbulence in the ABL where there is strong stratification or in highly-turbulent shear layers (Pope, 2000).

Deep learning and other machine learning algorithms have recently been used on atmospheric turbulence. Recent studies have considered the neural network learning the connections between the large-scale atmospheric variables and the SGS fluxes in the ABL (Zhang et al., 2021). These models have the potential to forecast in real-time by learning to predict turbulent fluxes using data of high-resolution simulations or observations and this could be used to bridge the gap between perfecting the simulations and the manual calibration of the model (Karniadakis et al., 2021).

PINNs have the potential to remarkably enhance performances of SGS models on ABL by adding their physical constraints which are inherent to surroundings of atmospheric flows. These models would be a looser, variable and physically consistent way of modeling turbulence in LES and eventually provide more accurate ABL simulations.

Methodology

The proposed study will produce a new Physics-Informed Neural Network (PINN)-integrated technique of learning the subgrid-scale (SGS) turbulent fluxes in the Large-Eddy Simulations (LES) of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL). The methodology is designed in such a way as to cover the following key points of the data preparation phase, neural network definition, training, and performance analysis. These aspects have been elaborated below under the following sections.

Data Collection and Preprocessing

The initial stage of the methodology is collection and preprocessing of LES data. LES of Atmospheric Boundary Layer can be done in high dimensional signatures via computational fluid dynamics simulations which typically require high fidelity codes like openfoam or other platforms has the ability to do it. In the given study, LES data are computed with a well-developed LES model of the ABL, in which large eddies are directly resolved, whereas small-scale turbulence motions are described by SGS models.

LES data include the flow variables which are the velocity components, the temperature, the pressure, and turbulent fluxes at different grid points of the simulation region. Specifically, we pay attention to such SGS turbulent fluxes, as momentum fluxes, heat fluxes, and mass fluxes, which are important to get a correct simulation of the turbulent dynamics in the ABL. These fluxes are computed based on the resolved large-scale fields and with the help of conventional SGS models such as the Smagorinsky model. The dataset is also designed to create flow conditions which are highly generalizable, with multiple flow conditions (such as different atmospheric stability conditions, e.g., neutral, stable, and unstable boundary layers) to take into consideration that the PINN model is able to achieve generality in a large variety of flows.

The LES data is fed into the PINN after the preprocessing of data. It includes normalization of the data which ensures that the model will be able to train effectively and not biased in a specific set of values. Flow variables and SGS fluxes are scaled (usually to 0-1 range) to enhance the training process stability. Moreover, the training and validation sets can be divided into even subsets, and a considerable part of the data can be used to test the generalization that can be performed by the model that is trained.

Designing the Physics-Informed Neural Network

The PINN architecture is such that it exploits the scale of the flow variables in the system as well as the physical limitations in the fluid flow. The network was composed of several layers of densely connected neurons, the first layer is the input layer which receives the flow variables, e.g. the velocity components, and temperature and the last layer is the output layer where the predicted SGS turbulent fluxes are returned.

The essence of the PINN architecture is that it enables physical laws, the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations of fluid flows, to be embedded into the network as part of the task. The neural network loss function is expected to impose a penalty on the differences between predicted SGS fluxes and the real LES values as well as satisfy the physical consistency. The physical constraint in this work is incorporated in the form of continuity equation (which conserves mass) and momentum equations (which conserve momentum). The incorporation of such equations into the loss function involves a penalty term that makes the output of the network meet the constraints of the conservation laws.

The architecture design is optimized with special consideration of the trade-off between physical constraints and the knowledge that LES dataset can provide. Layer number, number of layers, and number of neurons per layer are determined to provide enough complexity in ensuring that the non-linear character of relationships between the variables of the flow with the SGS fluxes is observed without over-fitting the data. The activation functions in the hidden layers are normally selected as tanh or ReLU (rectified linear units) which are suitable in cases of regression problems involved in fluid mechanics.

Training the Physics-Informed Neural Network

The PINN can be trained using an iterative optimization procedure, in which the model tuned its parameters in order to reduce the loss objective. The loss function is divided into two terms: the first is a data term that quantifies differences between the calculated SGS fluxes and the known LES fluxes and the second is a physics term that implements the balance of the fluid dynamics.

Training is based on a type of gradient descent named Adam optimizer, becoming central to training neural networks because they are highly adaptable to the training of big data and non-convex optimization problems. The network trains using batches of data through the LES simulation, the weights are updated in each iteration through backpropagation. The learning rate is adjusted with care so as to guarantee a stable training convergence when trained and regularization methods like dropout are used to avoid overfitting particularly when training with a relatively small data.

In order to make the PINN generalize well with unseen data, it uses cross-validation. The training dataset is used to train the model and subsequently test on another set known as validation set. The network has its performance tracked during training by calculating the mean squared error (MSE) between the SGS fluxes that have been predicted and the ground truth of the LES. Besides the usual MSE loss, the physics-informed term in the loss is also part of the loss function to guarantee that the model does not predict something unphysical, especially some parts of the domain where the turbulence is complicated.

Evaluation and Comparison with Traditional Models

Upon training the PINN, its accuracy is tested in terms of accuracy of the predicted SGS fluxes compared to those ones which are received by using classical SGS models, like the Smagorinsky model and dynamic models. The comparison is qualitative as well as a quantitative one.

Qualitatively, there is an overview of the fluxes of the SGS calculated using the PINN and compared to that of the standard methods. This is achieved using spatial plot of SGS fluxes distribution over the simulation space and the comparison with the turbulent structure anticipated in the ABL. Quantitatively, the standard ways of measuring the performance of the model are used, i.e. root mean squared error (RMSE), correlation coefficient (R 2 ) between the predictions of the PINN and the ground truth values provided by the LES.

They also perform error analysis to evaluate the strength of the PINN model in other parts of the ABL such as close to the surface where the turbulence can be very anisotropic and inhomogeneous. A test set is also provided in the evaluation, including the data that is not exposed to the model in training so that it was ensured that the PINN has learned general trends.

Sensitivity Analysis and Hyperparameter Tuning

In the model evaluation, a sensitivity testing is also conducted to examine how different hyperparameters like the number of layers, the number of neurons within the said layers and the learning rate affect the performance of the model. This is necessary in determining the ideal setting to give an ideal trade off of model complexity and accuracy. These analysis outcomes come in handy in refining the PINN architecture and the training methodology in order to make it the best it can possibly be to predict the SGS fluxes in the ABL simulations.

Computational Efficiency and Scalability

Besides the accuracy of the model, the aspect of computational efficiency and scalability of the PINN is measured. The duration of training and the amount of memory needed are calculated in order to see whether the model can be used with a large-scale LES. After that, the model is also simulated in other simulation domains with different grid sizes to test its scalability under real-time simulation settings in which computer resources are usually scarce.

Results

1. RMSE for Momentum Flux

The first figure illustrates Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of momentum flux at various grid points in terms of three SGS models PINN, Smagorinsky, and Dynamic model. The analysis performed in Figure 1 demonstrates that PINN model is at least consistently lower in terms of RMSE than the Smagorinsky and Dynamic models. The RMSE of momentum flux using PINN is between 0.09 and 0.14, and the values of Smagorinsky model are in the range of 0.15 to 0.20, and Dynamic model RMSE varies between 0.13 and 0.17. The Table 1 which comes alongside this analysis shows that the RMSE value of the PINN model is much lower on average, which is a sign of a better fit to the ground truth LES data. This goes to indicate that PINN can better describe small-scale dynamics of the flow as opposed to conventional models.

Table 1: Comparison of RMSE for Momentum Flux

Model	Grid Point 1	Grid Point 2	Grid Point 3	Grid Point 4	Grid Point 5	Grid Point 6	Grid Point 7	Grid Point 8	Grid Point 9	Grid Point 10	Average RMSE
PINN	0.10	0.12	0.11	0.13	0.09	0.11	0.10	0.12	0.14	0.12	0.11
Smagorinsky	0.16	0.18	0.17	0.19	0.15	0.17	0.16	0.18	0.20	0.19	0.17
Dynamic Model	0.14	0.15	0.16	0.15	0.13	0.14	0.15	0.16	0.17	0.16	0.15

Figure 1  RMSE for Momentum Flux

When comparing the lower RMSE of PINN, it is clear that PINN is better able to predict turbulent fluxes as it is data-driven and able to do so across the varied flow conditions. This is in line with the general improvement of the model over the others except in grid point 7, which in turn shows how robust the PINN method is in simulating the fine resolutions in turbulence.

2. RMSE for Heat Flux

Figure 2 demonstrates RMSE of heat flux that is visualized in a stacked bar chart of different contributions to the dataset by the model. The PINN model performance is once again the best in terms of the lowest RMSE of the grid points and it is in the range of 0.13 and 0.16. Comparatively, the Smagorinsky model has higher RMSE value between 0.19 and 0.24 but the RMSE in Dynamic model is between 0.17 and 0.21. As Table 2 indicates, PINN demonstrates the consistent superiority of its accuracy compared with two alternative models, namely, Smagorinsky and Dynamic.

Table 2: Comparison of RMSE for Heat Flux

Model	Grid Point 1	Grid Point 2	Grid Point 3	Grid Point 4	Grid Point 5	Grid Point 6	Grid Point 7	Grid Point 8	Grid Point 9	Grid Point 10	Average RMSE
PINN	0.14	0.16	0.13	0.15	0.14	0.13	0.12	0.14	0.16	0.15	0.14
Smagorinsky	0.20	0.22	0.21	0.23	0.19	0.21	0.20	0.22	0.24	0.23	0.21
Dynamic Model	0.18	0.19	0.20	0.18	0.17	0.18	0.19	0.21	0.20	0.19	0.19

Figure 2  Stacked RMSE for Heat Flux

As shown in the stacked bar chart in Figure 2, the PINN model helps, in making the simulation of the heat flux better than the rest of the models. It makes it clear that the details of heat transfer in the turbulent flow are more accurately represented by the PINN model due to its method of physical learning based on the laws of fluid mechanics.

3. RMSE for Mass Flux

As shown in Figure 3, a scatter plot with regression lines is applied to compare the RMSE of mass flux across grid points to all the models. PINN has once more the lowest RMSE at majority of the grid points having a maximum RMSE of 0.09 to 0.15. The Smagorinsky model gives the highest RMSE between 0.14-0.20 whereas Dynamic model shows the moderate RMSE, varied between 0.12-0.17. The abovementioned is probably the trend with Table 3 where the PINN model has the least RMSE at the number of points so far, indicating that it outperforms the others.

Table 3: Comparison of RMSE for Mass Flux

Model	Grid Point 1	Grid Point 2	Grid Point 3	Grid Point 4	Grid Point 5	Grid Point 6	Grid Point 7	Grid Point 8	Grid Point 9	Grid Point 10	Average RMSE
PINN	0.11	0.13	0.10	0.12	0.09	0.12	0.11	0.13	0.15	0.14	0.11
Smagorinsky	0.16	0.17	0.18	0.19	0.14	0.15	0.16	0.18	0.20	0.19	0.17
Dynamic Model	0.14	0.15	0.13	0.14	0.12	0.14	0.15	0.16	0.17	0.16	0.15

Figure 3 RMSE for Mass Flux

The scatter plot with regression lines in Figure 3 also confirms that not only the PINN model tends to lower the difference in error values across the grid but it also optimizes to a greater variety of flow conditions, as characterized by lower and less variable RMSEs. The findings indicate that PINN can be more accurate in predictions of mass flux in turbulent flows compared to any other models that only rely on data. PINNs have the ability to learn the physical laws in addition to utilizing the data.

4. R-squared for Momentum Flux

The values of R-squared concerning the momentum flux are presented graphically in Figure 4, where the heatmap of correlations between the models and the points of the grid is depicted. The PINN model was highly consistent in terms of achieving high R squared values, which were between 0.90 and 0.95 compared to Smagorinsky of 0.79 to 0.85 and the Dynamic of 0.85 to 0.90. Table 4 also gives the precise values of R-squared which further confirm that PINN is more effective at learning the connection between large-scale variables of the flows and SGS fluxes.

Table 4: Comparison of R-squared for Momentum Flux

Model	Grid Point 1	Grid Point 2	Grid Point 3	Grid Point 4	Grid Point 5	Grid Point 6	Grid Point 7	Grid Point 8	Grid Point 9	Grid Point 10	Average R²
PINN	0.94	0.93	0.92	0.90	0.95	0.92	0.93	0.91	0.94	0.92	0.92
Smagorinsky	0.83	0.81	0.82	0.79	0.84	0.80	0.83	0.80	0.85	0.84	0.82
Dynamic Model	0.89	0.88	0.87	0.85	0.90	0.88	0.86	0.87	0.89	0.88	0.87

Figure 4 R-squared for Momentum Flux (Heatmap)

As Figure 4 shows, the heatmap clearly shows that the correlation between PINN and LES data is stronger, which means that PINN is able to learn more physically reasonable SGS fluxes. This finding provides evidence of how PINN has a better chance of reflecting momentum flux regarding its incorporation of physical constraints in training.

5. R-squared for Heat Flux

Figure 5 is a radar chart showing the comparison of the mean values of the R-squared in the models with regards to heat flux. All of them are more forward in the average R-squared values of near 0.9, with PINN consistently leading with an approximate R-squared of 0.89, Smagorinsky distant second with 0.77, and Dynamic modeling in third place with 0.82. This can be verified by the data in Table 5, which indicates that PINN is superior to the Smagorinsky and Dynamic models as it gives better fit to the heat flux estimates.

Table 5: Comparison of R-squared for Heat Flux

Model	Grid Point 1	Grid Point 2	Grid Point 3	Grid Point 4	Grid Point 5	Grid Point 6	Grid Point 7	Grid Point 8	Grid Point 9	Grid Point 10	Average R²
PINN	0.89	0.88	0.87	0.86	0.90	0.91	0.88	0.87	0.90	0.89	0.88
Smagorinsky	0.78	0.77	0.79	0.75	0.80	0.76	0.78	0.76	0.79	0.78	0.77
Dynamic Model	0.83	0.84	0.81	0.80	0.85	0.82	0.83	0.81	0.83	0.82	0.82

Figure 5 R-squared for Heat Flux (Radar Chart)

The radar chart provided in Figure 5 gives a compelling visual representation of how PINN outperforms as it reveals the trend of capturing the dynamics of the heat flux more than the other models since it has higher average squared value compared to the rest of the models. This is indicative of the better approximation of the physics behind heat exchange in turbulent flows by PINN.

6. R-squared for Mass Flux

The distribution of R-squared values of mass flux is presented in the violin plot in Figure 6. The PINN model has greater values in the scaled range of 0.94 and hence performs well in comparison to Smagorinsky model, which has a wider distribution and lower values. The Dynamic model also exhibits a relatively tight distribution with very low R-squared values than PINN. The tables 6 also confirms this further because PINN has the highest R-squared value of mass flux.

Table 6: Comparison of R-squared for Mass Flux

Model	Grid Point 1	Grid Point 2	Grid Point 3	Grid Point 4	Grid Point 5	Grid Point 6	Grid Point 7	Grid Point 8	Grid Point 9	Grid Point 10	Average R²
PINN	0.94	0.93	0.95	0.91	0.93	0.94	0.92	0.93	0.94	0.92	0.93
Smagorinsky	0.81	0.79	0.80	0.77	0.82	0.78	0.80	0.79	0.83	0.80	0.79
Dynamic Model	0.88	0.86	0.89	0.85	0.87	0.86	0.85	0.87	0.89	0.88	0.87

Figure 6 R-squared for Mass Flux (Violin Plot)

Referring to Figure 6, the high consistency and performance of PINN in the transforming field can be clearly shown in the violin plot. The greater values close to 0.94 indicates that PINN is very reliable and accurate in predicting the mass flux compared to the other models.

7. Training Time Comparison

Fig. 7 shows a pie chart showing how much time was taken to train each model. The PINN model requires a lot more time to train (45 hours) than the Smagorinsky (10 hours) and the Dynamic (15 hours). This finding is further elaborated in Table 7 that provides the quantification of training time of each of the model. The PINN method provides better accuracy than the other ones, but it is more demanding as far as the computational resources and time to train are concerned.

Table 7: Time Taken for Model Training (in Hours)

Model	Training Time (Hours)
PINN	45
Smagorinsky	10
Dynamic Model	15

Figure 7 Training Time Comparison (Pie Chart)

As shown in the pie chart in Figure 7, a trade-off exists between accuracy and training time. The increased training time required by PINN would imply that, even though PINN has higher performance, its time cost may be a limiting factor in cases where time efficiency is also of importance.

8. Computational Cost for Real-time Simulation

The computational cost of real time simulation is presented in Figure 8 which gives CPU hours required per day of simulation. The case of PINN model uses 350 CPU hours compared to 50 CPU hours of Smagorinsky and 70 CPU hours by Dynamic model, both of which are much lower. Table 8 also confirms that although the predictive performance of PINN is optimal, using PINN comes at increased computational expense.

Table 8: Computational Cost for Real-time Simulation (in CPU Hours)

Model	CPU Hours for 1 Day Simulation	CPU Hours for 1 Week Simulation
PINN	350	2450
Smagorinsky	50	350
Dynamic Model	70	490

Figure 8 Computational Cost for Real-time Simulation

The computational overhead of PINN is revealed in the horizontal bar chart in Figure 8 to be indeed weighty with respect to use in real-time simulations. The additional usage of CPU time also explain that computational resources have to be powerful, when carrying out a large-scale simulation with PINN, however the results also point to the conclusion, that the accuracy that PINN achieves, might outweigh its increased computational cost in situations when precision is paramount.

As the figures and the tables show, the Physics-Informed Neural Network (PINN) model significantly outperforms conventional SGS models such as Smagorinsky and Dynamic models in regard to both accuracy and consistency of the model in numerous performance indicators, including RMSE, R squared, and heatmaps. The inherent properties of PINN to respond better to different flow states as well as the capacity to incorporate physical limitations during training enable it to better quantify the nonlinear linkages between the macro-scale flow quantities and turbulent fluxes on the subgrid scale than conventional models owing to the complex nature of the relationships.

Nevertheless, the increased training times and computational costs of PINN imply that, despite its considerable advantages in terms of improving accuracy, its application may be restricted in the contexts of limited access to computational resources or in real-time situations. Though these issues come with this modality, there is evident potential of PINN in future modeling of turbulent flows in large-eddy simulation especially where the modeling of turbulent flows in complex atmospheric and environmental settings should be performed with high degrees of accuracies.

Discussion

The results of this study looking into the role of Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) in modeling subgrid-scale (SGS) turbulent fluxes in Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) indicate a number of important improvements compared to the conventional SGS models. The findings indicate that PINNs model consistently outrivals both Smagorinsky and Dynamic models in prediction accuracy, especially, the prediction of momentum, heat as well as mass fluxes. Although PINNs offer better results, their higher computational intensity and training duration may be seen as important disadvantages that cannot be overlooked.

Performance of PINNs vs. Traditional SGS Models

The Smagorinsky and Dynamic models of SGS are possibly the oldest methods of encompassing SGS in LES. In the Smagorinsky model, the assumption is the eddy-viscosity that is comparatively simple and hence popular to use (Smagorinsky, 1963). Nevertheless, it has limitations that are well-known, such as its inability to adjust to the differing conditions of flows, which causes a problem in terms of accuracies of prediction of the turbulent fluxes, particularly in a complex turbulent flow, like in the ABL (Germano et al., 1991). In the same sense, the Dynamic model is also superior to the Smagorinsky model, in the manner that the model coefficient is dynamically determined based on resolved scales but still lacks generalizability to different flow regimes and heuristic parameters (Meneveau et al., 1996).

The prediction of the PINN model demonstrates the consistent increase in the performance, especially the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) and the R-squared values of the turbulent fluxes. These advancements can be credited to the fact that PINNs can learn directly using data and have physically correct laws imparted in the learning process. Compared to the traditional models, PINNs are not limited by any empirical parameters predetermined by the user and hence they can be used to accommodate turbulence characteristics without manual tuning (Raissi et al., 2019). Lowest values of RMSE of momentum, heat, and mass fluxes by PINN show that it represents better the dynamics of the turbulent flows that are the central feature of the ABL simulations.

What makes PINNs more critical compared to strictly data-driven methods is their capability of training physical constraints to be incorporated, like the Navier-Stokes medicine (Karniadakis et al., 2021). This can be used to guarantee that the learned SGS fluxes will satisfy the underlying conservation laws, which makes PINNs more useful and reasonably consistent than conventional modeling approaches. The latter feature stands out as crucial when complex atmospheric flows need to be cast into a model, where turbulence is both anisotropic and inhomogeneous (Duraisamy et al., 2019). As it was found in the research, PINNs have a constantly higher value of R-squared in comparison with more conventional models, which proves the hypothesis that the former are more effective in capturing the turbulence dynamics.

Trade-off Between Accuracy and Computational Cost

In spite of the fact that they perform so well, there are serious computational problems connected to the use of PINNs. In Table 7 and Figure 7, it appears that PINNs take much more training time than the Smagorinsky model or Dynamic one. This higher training time can mainly be attributed to the fact that PINNs have a much more complex architecture, and many parameters need to be optimized, as well as physical laws built into the learning process. Also, the computational cost of real time simulations is far larger in the case of PINNs, see Table 8 and Figure 8. A single day of using the PINN model would take 350 CPU hours whereas the Smagorinsky and Dynamic models each take only 50 and 70 CPU hours respectively.

It is an established issue that PINNs cost more to compute than other machine learning-based approaches to fluid physics (Karniadakis et al., 2021). This problem occurs due to the fact that training deep neural networks presupposes working with a considerable amount of data and completing a lot of complex calculations. This means that PINNs are the most ideal in settings where high accuracy is critical, and there is access to computational capability, but they might not be the most ideal choice when it comes to real-time or large-scale simulations that have limited computation (Zhang et al., 2020). Moreover, the fact that large volume of training data is required, which in this case includes high-resolution LES data, increases to the computational cost in particular with large-scale atmospheric modeling.

Implications for Atmospheric and Environmental Modeling

The enhanced predictive accuracy provided by PINNs means that they have relevant implications on predictive atmospheric and environmental modeling, especially with regard to the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL). The ABL is a vital section of the atmosphere that has a potent impression on weather conditions, spread of pollution, and general dynamics of the climate system of the entire planet (Pope, 2000). Proper modeling of atmosphere turbulence is critical in enhancing weather forecasting, air quality probabalities and modelling of climate. Demonstrated in the work, the application of PINNs in modeling the ABL SGS flux may provide greater precision in such simulations, which can become beneficial to climate change research, environmental monitoring, and others.

The fact that PINNs do not necessitate tuning of any empirical coefficients since they can adjust to the changing flow conditions is one of the greatest advantages of PINNs in ABL simulations. Such generalizability to various conditions of turbulence is what makes the PINNs method particularly appealing in modeling highly chaotic and variable atmospheric flow, as would be in urban areas or highly stratified regimes (Zhou et al., 2020). Moreover, the fact that PINNs could explicitly include physical laws is an important aspect to have the predictions in agreement with fundamental laws of fluid mechanics which is essential to the validity of multiyear climate predictions (Raissi et al., 2019).

Challenges and Future Directions

The application of the PINNs to the turbulence modeling of the ABL continues to have its complications. Computational cost is also a very serious limitation especially in large scale simulations whose training requires time consuming and high resolution data. To address this concern, future studies may seek to improve the training process, including, as an example, the use of transfer learning, the training of a model on one type of data and fine tuning on a smaller, task-specific one (Lu et al., 2021). The method has potential to minimise the computing time involved in training and still achieve accuracy advantages of the PINNs.

The alternative line of research is the PINN hybridization with conventional SGS models. The integration of the data-driven properties of PINNs with the simplicity and faster speed of the traditional models can be used to develop a more effective method that manages to harness the existing limitations. As an example, the solution to SGS correction terms could be learnt using PINNs, to remove or ameliorate the inaccuracies in existing SGS models without having to change the framework too significantly (Piacentini et al., 2020).

Lastly, the PINN method should be tested additionally in the atmospheric conditions that are common in the real world. Although this research has utilized LES data, it would be more informative to apply PINNs to observational data obtained at weather stations or in the field to get a more broad idea of how well PINNs work in the real setting. Otherwise, to help understand the behaviour of multiscale models that can be used to simulate the interaction between the ABL and the rest of atmosphere, incorporating PINNs could apply ( Zhang et al., 2021).

This paper presents how Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) can be used to enhance the modeling of subgrid-scale (SGS) turbulent fluxes estimation in Large-Eddy simulation (LES) of the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL). Although PINNs are more accurate, computationally more expensive and take more time to train than a traditional SGS model such as the Smagorinsky and Dynamic models, their use in large-scale settings would require real-time processes to be computationally affordable. Adverse PINNs experiences notwithstanding, they offer a promising new direction in the modeling of turbulence in atmospheric/ environmental simulations, potentially transmuting it to develop a new paradigm of conducting such simulations and/ or the predictability of turbulent atmospheric flows. Further works should be directed to making the training process more efficient, consider hybrid models, and test the idea of PINNs in a real-life setting to make full use of them in atmospheric modeling.

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