Staying on prime of a fast-growing analysis area is rarely straightforward.
I face this problem firsthand as a practitioner in Physics-Knowledgeable Neural Networks (PINNs). New papers, be they algorithmic developments or cutting-edge functions, are printed at an accelerating tempo by each academia and trade. Whereas it’s thrilling to see this fast improvement, it inevitably raises a urgent query:
How can one keep knowledgeable with out spending numerous hours sifting by means of papers?
That is the place I’ve discovered assessment papers to be exceptionally beneficial. Good assessment papers are efficient instruments that distill important insights and spotlight necessary tendencies. They’re big-time savers guiding us by means of the flood of knowledge.
On this weblog publish, I want to share with you my private, curated listing of must-read assessment papers on PINNs, which are particularly influential for my very own understanding and use of PINNs. These papers cowl key points of PINNs, together with algorithmic developments, implementation greatest practices, and real-world functions.
Along with what’s out there in current literature, I’ve included one among my very own assessment papers, which offers a complete evaluation of frequent useful utilization patterns of PINNs — a sensible perspective usually lacking from educational critiques. This evaluation is predicated on my assessment of round 200 arXiv papers on PINNs throughout varied engineering domains prior to now 3 years and might function a vital information for practitioners trying to deploy these strategies to deal with real-world challenges.
For every assessment paper, I’ll clarify why it deserves your consideration by explaining its distinctive perspective and indicating sensible takeaways that you would be able to profit from instantly.
Whether or not you’re simply getting began with PINNs, utilizing them to deal with real-world issues, or exploring new analysis instructions, I hope this assortment makes navigating the busy area of PINN analysis simpler for you.
Let’s reduce by means of the complexity collectively and give attention to what really issues.
1️⃣ Scientific Machine Studying by means of Physics-Knowledgeable Neural Networks: The place we’re and what’s subsequent
📄 Paper at a look
🔍 What it covers
- Authors: S. Cuomo, V. Schiano di Cola, F. Giampaolo, G. Rozza, M. Raissi, and F. Piccialli
- 12 months: 2022
- Hyperlink: arXiv
This assessment is structured round key themes in PINNs: the elemental parts that outline their structure, theoretical points of their studying course of, and their software to numerous computing challenges in engineering. The paper additionally explores the out there toolsets, rising tendencies, and future instructions.

✨ What’s distinctive
This assessment paper stands out within the following methods:
- Top-of-the-line introductions to PINN fundamentals. This paper takes a well-paced method to explaining PINNs from the bottom up. Part 2 systematically dissects the constructing blocks of a PINN, protecting varied underlying neural community architectures and their related traits, how PDE constraints are integrated, frequent coaching methodologies, and studying concept (convergence, error evaluation, and so on.) of PINNs.
- Placing PINNs in historic context. Quite than merely presenting PINNs as a standalone resolution, the paper traces their improvement from earlier work on utilizing deep studying to unravel differential equations. This historic framing is efficacious as a result of it helps demystify PINNs by displaying that they’re an evolution of earlier concepts, and it makes it simpler for practitioners to see what options can be found.
- Equation-driven group. As a substitute of simply classifying PINN analysis by scientific domains (e.g., geoscience, materials science, and so on.) as many different critiques do, this paper categorizes PINNs based mostly on the sorts of differential equations (e.g., diffusion issues, advection issues, and so on.) they resolve. This equation-first perspective encourages information switch as the identical set of PDEs may very well be used throughout a number of scientific domains. As well as, it makes it simpler for practitioners to see the strengths and weaknesses of PINNs when coping with various kinds of differential equations.
🛠 Sensible goodies
Past its theoretical insights, this assessment paper provides instantly helpful sources for practitioners:
- An entire implementation instance. In part 3.4, this paper walks by means of a full PINN implementation to unravel a 1D Nonlinear Schrödinger equation. It covers translating equations into PINN formulations, dealing with boundary and preliminary circumstances, defining neural community architectures, selecting coaching methods, choosing collocation factors, and making use of optimization strategies. All implementation particulars are clearly documented for simple reproducibility. The paper compares PINN efficiency by various completely different hyperparameters, which may provide instantly relevant insights on your personal PINN experiments.
- Out there frameworks and software program instruments. Desk 3 compiles a complete listing of main PINN toolkits, with detailed device descriptions offered in part 4.3. The thought of backends embody not solely Tensorflow and PyTorch but additionally Julia and Jax. This side-by-side comparability of various frameworks is particularly helpful for selecting the correct device on your wants.
💡Who would profit
- This assessment paper advantages anybody new to PINNs and searching for a transparent, structured introduction.
- Engineers and builders searching for sensible implementation steering would discover the reasonable, hands-on demo, and the thorough comparability of current PINN frameworks most attention-grabbing. Moreover, they’ll discover related prior work on differential equations much like their present downside, which provides insights they’ll leverage in their very own problem-solving.
- Researchers investigating theoretical points of PINN convergence, optimization, or effectivity may also significantly profit from this paper.
2️⃣ From PINNs to PIKANs: Current Advances in Physics-Knowledgeable Machine Studying
📄 Paper at a look
- Authors: J. D. Toscano, V. Oommen, A. J. Varghese, Z. Zou, N. A. Daryakenari, C. Wu, and G. E. Karniadakis
- 12 months: 2024
- Hyperlink: arXiv
🔍 What it covers
This paper offers one of many latest overviews of the newest developments in PINNs. It emphasises enhancements in community design, function growth, optimization methods, uncertainty quantification, and theoretical insights. The paper additionally surveys key functions throughout a spread of domains.

✨ What’s distinctive
This assessment paper stands out within the following methods:
- A structured taxonomy of algorithmic developments. Some of the contemporary contributions of this paper is its taxonomy of algorithmic developments. This new taxonomy scheme elegantly categorizes all of the developments into three core areas: (1) illustration mannequin, (2) dealing with governing equations, and (3) optimization course of. This construction offers a transparent framework for understanding each present developments and potential instructions for future analysis. As well as, the illustrations used within the paper are top-notch and simply digestible.

- Highlight on Physics-informed Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks (KAN). KAN, a brand new structure based mostly on the Kolmogorov–Arnold illustration theorem, is at present a sizzling subject in deep studying. Within the PINN group, some work has already been finished to interchange the multilayer perceptions (MLP) illustration with KANs to achieve extra expressiveness and coaching effectivity. The group lacks a complete assessment of this new line of analysis. This assessment paper (part 3.1) precisely fills within the hole.
- Evaluation on uncertainty quantification (UQ) in PINNs. UQ is crucial for the dependable and reliable deployment of PINNs when tackling real-world engineering functions. In part 5, this paper offers a devoted part on UQ, explaining the frequent sources of uncertainty in fixing differential equations with PINNs and reviewing methods for quantifying prediction confidence.
- Theoretical advances in PINN coaching dynamics. In follow, coaching PINNs is non-trivial. Practitioners are sometimes puzzled by why PINNs coaching typically fail, or how they need to be skilled optimally. In part 6.2, this paper offers probably the most detailed and up-to-date discussions on this facet, protecting the Neural Tangent Kernel (NTK) evaluation of PINNs, data bottleneck concept, and multi-objective optimization challenges.
🛠 Sensible goodies
Though this assessment paper leans in the direction of the theory-heavy facet, two significantly beneficial points stand out from a sensible perspective:
- A timeline of algorithmic advances in PINNs. In Appendix A Desk, this paper tracks the milestones of key developments in PINNs, from the unique PINN formulation to the newest extensions to KANs. In the event you’re engaged on algorithmic enhancements, this timeline offers you a transparent view of what’s already been finished. In the event you’re battling PINN coaching or accuracy, you should use this desk to search out current strategies which may resolve your difficulty.
- A broad overview of PINN functions throughout domains. In comparison with all the opposite critiques, this paper strives to provide the most complete and up to date protection of PINN functions in not solely the engineering domains but additionally different less-covered fields corresponding to finance. Practitioners can simply discover prior works performed of their domains and draw inspiration.
💡Who would profit
- For practitioners working in safety-critical fields that want confidence intervals or reliability estimates on their PINN predictions, the dialogue on UQ can be helpful. In case you are battling PINN coaching instability, gradual convergence, or surprising failures, the dialogue on PINN coaching dynamics may also help unpack the theoretical causes behind these points.
- Researchers could discover this paper particularly attention-grabbing due to the brand new taxonomy, which permits them to see patterns and determine gaps and alternatives for novel contributions. As well as, the assessment of cutting-edge work on PI-KAN may also be inspiring.
3️⃣ Physics-Knowledgeable Neural Networks: An Software-Centric Information
📄 Paper at a look
- Authors: S. Guo (this creator)
- 12 months: 2024
- Hyperlink: Medium
🔍 What it covers
This text critiques how PINNs are used to deal with various kinds of engineering duties. For every process class, the article discusses the issue assertion, why PINNs are helpful, how PINNs may be applied to deal with the issue, and is adopted by a concrete use case printed within the literature.

✨ What’s distinctive
In contrast to most critiques that categorize PINN functions both based mostly on the kind of differential equations solved or particular engineering domains, this text picks an angle that practitioners care about essentially the most: the engineering duties solved by PINNs. This work is predicated on reviewing papers on PINN case research scattered in varied engineering domains. The result is an inventory of distilled recurring useful utilization patterns of PINNs:
- Predictive modeling and simulations, the place PINNs are leveraged for dynamical system forecasting, coupled system modeling, and surrogate modeling.
- Optimization, the place PINNs are generally employed to attain environment friendly design optimization, inverse design, mannequin predictive management, and optimized sensor placement.
- Information-driven insights, the place PINNs are used to determine the unknown parameters or useful types of the system, in addition to to assimilate observational knowledge to higher estimate the system states.
- Information-driven enhancement, the place PINNs are used to reconstruct the sphere and improve the decision of the observational knowledge.
- Monitoring, diagnostic, and well being evaluation, the place PINNs are leveraged to behave as digital sensors, anomaly detectors, well being screens, and predictive maintainers.
🛠 Sensible goodies
This text locations practitioners’ wants on the forefront. Whereas most current assessment papers merely reply the query, “Has PINN been utilized in my area?”, practitioners usually search extra particular steering: “Has PINN been used for the kind of downside I’m making an attempt to unravel?”. That is exactly what this text tries to deal with.
Through the use of the proposed five-category useful classification, practitioners can conveniently map their issues to those classes, see how others have solved them, and what labored and what didn’t. As a substitute of reinventing the wheel, practitioners can leverage established use circumstances and adapt confirmed options to their very own issues.
💡Who would profit
This assessment is greatest for practitioners who wish to see how PINNs are literally being utilized in the actual world. It may also be significantly beneficial for cross-disciplinary innovation, as practitioners can study from options developed in different fields.
4️⃣ An Knowledgeable’s Information to Coaching Physics-informed Neural Networks
📄 Paper at a look
- Authors: S. Wang, S. Sankaran, H. Wang, P. Perdikaris
- 12 months: 2023
- Hyperlink: arXiv
🔍 What it covers
Though it doesn’t market itself as a “commonplace” assessment, this paper goes all in on offering a complete handbook for coaching PINNs. It presents an in depth set of greatest practices for coaching physics-informed neural networks (PINNs), addressing points like spectral bias, unbalanced loss phrases, and causality violations. It additionally introduces difficult benchmarks and in depth ablation research to reveal these strategies.

✨ What’s distinctive
- A unified “knowledgeable’s information”. The primary authors are lively researchers in PINNs, working extensively on bettering PINN coaching effectivity and mannequin accuracy for the previous years. This paper is a distilled abstract of the authors’ previous work, synthesizing a broad vary of latest PINN strategies (e.g., Fourier function embeddings, adaptive loss weighting, causal coaching) right into a cohesive coaching pipeline. This looks like having a mentor who tells you precisely what does and doesn’t work with PINNs.
- A radical hyperparameter tuning examine. This paper conducts varied experiments to indicate how completely different tweaks (e.g., completely different architectures, coaching schemes, and so on.) play out on completely different PDE duties. Their ablation research present exactly which strategies transfer the needle, and by how a lot.
- PDE benchmarks. The paper compiles a collection of difficult PDE benchmarks and provides state-of-the-art outcomes that PINNs can obtain.
🛠 Sensible goodies
- An issue-solution cheat sheet. This paper totally paperwork varied strategies addressing frequent PINN coaching pain-points. Every approach is clearly offered utilizing a structured format: the why (motivation), how (how the method addresses the issue), and what (the implementation particulars). This makes it very straightforward for practitioners to determine the “remedy” based mostly on the “signs” noticed of their PINN coaching course of. What’s nice is that the authors transparently mentioned potential pitfalls of every method, permitting practitioners to make well-informed choices and efficient trade-offs.
- Empirical insights. The paper shares beneficial empirical insights obtained from in depth hyperparameter tuning experiments. It provides sensible steering on selecting appropriate hyperparameters, e.g., community architectures and studying fee schedules, and demonstrates how these parameters work together with the superior PINN coaching strategies proposed.
- Prepared-to-use library. The paper is accompanied by an optimized JAX library that practitioners can straight undertake or customise. The library helps multi-GPU environments and is prepared for scaling to large-scale issues.
💡Who would profit
- Practitioners who’re battling unstable or gradual PINN coaching can discover many sensible methods to repair frequent pathologies. They will additionally profit from the easy templates (in JAX) to rapidly adapt PINNs to their very own PDE setups.
- Researchers searching for difficult benchmark issues and aiming to benchmark new PINN concepts towards well-documented baselines will discover this paper particularly useful.
5️⃣ Area-Particular Evaluation Papers
Past normal critiques in PINNs, there are a number of good assessment papers that concentrate on particular scientific and engineering domains. In the event you’re working in one among these fields, these critiques may present a deeper dive into greatest practices and cutting-edge functions.
1. Warmth Switch Issues
Paper: Physics-Knowledgeable Neural Networks for Warmth Switch Issues
The paper offers an application-centric dialogue on how PINNs can be utilized to deal with varied thermal engineering issues, together with inverse warmth switch, convection-dominated flows, and phase-change modeling. It highlights real-world challenges corresponding to lacking boundary circumstances, sensor-driven inverse issues, and adaptive cooling system design. The economic case examine associated to energy electronics is especially insightful for understanding the utilization of PINNs in follow.
2. Energy Methods
Paper: Purposes of Physics-Knowledgeable Neural Networks in Energy Methods — A Evaluation
This paper provides a structured overview of how PINNs are utilized to important energy grid challenges, together with state/parameter estimation, dynamic evaluation, energy stream calculation, optimum energy stream (OPF), anomaly detection, and mannequin synthesis. For every kind of software, the paper discusses the shortcomings of conventional energy system options and explains why PINNs may very well be advantageous in addressing these shortcomings. This comparative abstract is helpful for understanding the motivation for adopting PINNs.
3. Fluid Mechanics
Paper: Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) for fluid mechanics: A assessment
This paper explored three detailed case research that reveal PINNs software in fluid dynamics: (1) 3D wake stream reconstruction utilizing sparse 2D velocity knowledge, (2) inverse issues in compressible stream (e.g., shock wave prediction with minimal boundary knowledge), and (3) biomedical stream modeling, the place PINNs infer thrombus materials properties from phase-field knowledge. The paper highlights how PINNs overcome limitations in conventional CFD, e.g., mesh dependency, costly knowledge assimilation, and problem dealing with ill-posed inverse issues.
4. Additive Manufacturing
This paper examines how PINNs tackle important challenges particular to additive manufacturing course of prediction or monitoring, together with temperature area prediction, fluid dynamics modeling, fatigue life estimation, accelerated finite ingredient simulations, and course of traits prediction.
6️⃣ Conclusion
On this weblog publish, we went by means of a curated listing of assessment papers on PINNs, protecting basic theoretical insights, the newest algorithmic developments, and sensible application-oriented views. For every paper, we highlighted distinctive contributions, key takeaways, and the viewers that will profit essentially the most from these insights. I hope this curated assortment may also help you higher navigate the evolving area of PINNs.