Stability-Certified Learning of Control Systems with Quadratic Nonlinearities

This work primarily focuses on an operator inference methodology aimed at constructing low-dimensional dynamical models based on a priori hypotheses about their structure, often informed by established physics or expert insights. Stability is a fundamental attribute of dynamical systems, yet it is not always assured in models derived through inference. Our main objective is to develop a method that facilitates the inference of quadratic control dynamical systems with inherent stability guarantees. To this aim, we investigate the stability characteristics of control systems with energy-preserving nonlinearities, thereby identifying conditions under which such systems are bounded-input bounded-state stable. These insights are subsequently applied to the learning process, yielding inferred models that are inherently stable by design. The efficacy of our proposed framework is demonstrated through a couple of numerical examples.

Learning reduced-order Quadratic-Linear models in Process Engineering using Operator Inference

In this work, we address the challenge of efficiently modeling dynamical systems in process engineering. We use reduced-order model learning, specifically operator inference. This is a non-intrusive, data-driven method for learning dynamical systems from time-domain data. The application in our study is carbon dioxide methanation, an important reaction within the Power-to-X framework, to demonstrate its potential. The numerical results show the ability of the reduced-order models constructed with operator inference to provide a reduced yet accurate surrogate solution. This represents an important milestone towards the implementation of fast and reliable digital twin architectures.

A Robust SINDy Approach by Combining Neural Networks and an Integral Form

The discovery of governing equations from data has been an active field of research for decades. One widely used methodology for this purpose is sparse regression for nonlinear dynamics, known as SINDy. Despite several attempts, noisy and scarce data still pose a severe challenge to the success of the SINDy approach. In this work, we discuss a robust method to discover nonlinear governing equations from noisy and scarce data. To do this, we make use of neural networks to learn an implicit representation based on measurement data so that not only it produces the output in the vicinity of the measurements but also the time-evolution of output can be described by a dynamical system. Additionally, we learn such a dynamic system in the spirit of the SINDy framework. Leveraging the implicit representation using neural networks, we obtain the derivative information -- required for SINDy -- using an automatic differentiation tool. To enhance the robustness of our methodology, we further incorporate an integral condition on the output of the implicit networks. Furthermore, we extend our methodology to handle data collected from multiple initial conditions. We demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methodology to discover governing equations under noisy and scarce data regimes by means of several examples and compare its performance with existing methods.

Deep Learning for Structure-Preserving Universal Stable Koopman-Inspired Embeddings for Nonlinear Canonical Hamiltonian Dynamics

Discovering a suitable coordinate transformation for nonlinear systems enables the construction of simpler models, facilitating prediction, control, and optimization for complex nonlinear systems. To that end, Koopman operator theory offers a framework for global linearization for nonlinear systems, thereby allowing the usage of linear tools for design studies. In this work, we focus on the identification of global linearized embeddings for canonical nonlinear Hamiltonian systems through a symplectic transformation. While this task is often challenging, we leverage the power of deep learning to discover the desired embeddings. Furthermore, to overcome the shortcomings of Koopman operators for systems with continuous spectra, we apply the lifting principle and learn global cubicized embeddings. Additionally, a key emphasis is paid to enforce the bounded stability for the dynamics of the discovered embeddings. We demonstrate the capabilities of deep learning in acquiring compact symplectic coordinate transformation and the corresponding simple dynamical models, fostering data-driven learning of nonlinear canonical Hamiltonian systems, even those with continuous spectra.

Guaranteed Stable Quadratic Models and their applications in SINDy and Operator Inference

Scientific machine learning for learning dynamical systems is a powerful tool that combines data-driven modeling models, physics-based modeling, and empirical knowledge. It plays an essential role in an engineering design cycle and digital twinning. In this work, we primarily focus on an operator inference methodology that builds dynamical models, preferably in low-dimension, with a prior hypothesis on the model structure, often determined by known physics or given by experts. Then, for inference, we aim to learn the operators of a model by setting up an appropriate optimization problem. One of the critical properties of dynamical systems is{stability. However, such a property is not guaranteed by the inferred models. In this work, we propose inference formulations to learn quadratic models, which are stable by design. Precisely, we discuss the parameterization of quadratic systems that are locally and globally stable. Moreover, for quadratic systems with no stable point yet bounded (e.g., Chaotic Lorenz model), we discuss an attractive trapping region philosophy and a parameterization of such systems. Using those parameterizations, we set up inference problems, which are then solved using a gradient-based optimization method. Furthermore, to avoid numerical derivatives and still learn continuous systems, we make use of an integration form of differential equations. We present several numerical examples, illustrating the preservation of stability and discussing its comparison with the existing state-of-the-art approach to infer operators. By means of numerical examples, we also demonstrate how proposed methods are employed to discover governing equations and energy-preserving models.

Data-Driven Identification of Quadratic Symplectic Representations of Nonlinear Hamiltonian Systems

We present a framework for learning Hamiltonian systems using data. This work is based on the lifting hypothesis, which posits that nonlinear Hamiltonian systems can be written as nonlinear systems with cubic Hamiltonians. By leveraging this, we obtain quadratic dynamics that are Hamiltonian in a transformed coordinate system. To that end, for given generalized position and momentum data, we propose a methodology to learn quadratic dynamical systems, enforcing the Hamiltonian structure in combination with a symplectic auto-encoder. The enforced Hamiltonian structure exhibits long-term stability of the system, while the cubic Hamiltonian function provides relatively low model complexity. For low-dimensional data, we determine a higher-order transformed coordinate system, whereas, for high-dimensional data, we find a lower-order coordinate system with the desired properties. We demonstrate the proposed methodology by means of both low-dimensional and high-dimensional nonlinear Hamiltonian systems.

Active-Learning-Driven Surrogate Modeling for Efficient Simulation of Parametric Nonlinear Systems

When repeated evaluations for varying parameter configurations of a high-fidelity physical model are required, surrogate modeling techniques based on model order reduction are desired. In absence of the governing equations describing the dynamics, we need to construct the parametric reduced-order surrogate model in a non-intrusive fashion. In this setting, the usual residual-based error estimate for optimal parameter sampling associated with the reduced basis method is not directly available. Our work provides a non-intrusive optimality criterion to efficiently populate the parameter snapshots, thereby, enabling us to effectively construct a parametric surrogate model. We consider separate parameter-specific proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) subspaces and propose an active-learning-driven surrogate model using kernel-based shallow neural networks, abbreviated as ActLearn-POD-KSNN surrogate model. To demonstrate the validity of our proposed ideas, we present numerical experiments using two physical models, namely Burgers' equation and shallow water equations. Both the models have mixed -- convective and diffusive -- effects within their respective parameter domains, with each of them dominating in certain regions. The proposed ActLearn-POD-KSNN surrogate model efficiently predicts the solution at new parameter locations, even for a setting with multiple interacting shock profiles.

Rank-Minimizing and Structured Model Inference

While extracting information from data with machine learning plays an increasingly important role, physical laws and other first principles continue to provide critical insights about systems and processes of interest in science and engineering. This work introduces a method that infers models from data with physical insights encoded in the form of structure and that minimizes the model order so that the training data are fitted well while redundant degrees of freedom without conditions and sufficient data to fix them are automatically eliminated. The models are formulated via solution matrices of specific instances of generalized Sylvester equations that enforce interpolation of the training data and relate the model order to the rank of the solution matrices. The proposed method numerically solves the Sylvester equations for minimal-rank solutions and so obtains models of low order. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the combination of structure preservation and rank minimization leads to accurate models with orders of magnitude fewer degrees of freedom than models of comparable prediction quality that are learned with structure preservation alone.

A weighted subspace exponential kernel for support tensor machines

High-dimensional data in the form of tensors are challenging for kernel classification methods. To both reduce the computational complexity and extract informative features, kernels based on low-rank tensor decompositions have been proposed. However, what decisive features of the tensors are exploited by these kernels is often unclear. In this paper we propose a novel kernel that is based on the Tucker decomposition. For this kernel the Tucker factors are computed based on re-weighting of the Tucker matrices with tuneable powers of singular values from the HOSVD decomposition. This provides a mechanism to balance the contribution of the Tucker core and factors of the data. We benchmark support tensor machines with this new kernel on several datasets. First we generate synthetic data where two classes differ in either Tucker factors or core, and compare our novel and previously existing kernels. We show robustness of the new kernel with respect to both classification scenarios. We further test the new method on real-world datasets. The proposed kernel has demonstrated a higher test accuracy than the state-of-the-art tensor train multi-way multi-level kernel, and a significantly lower computational time.

Inference of Continuous Linear Systems from Data with Guaranteed Stability

Machine-learning technologies for learning dynamical systems from data play an important role in engineering design. This research focuses on learning continuous linear models from data. Stability, a key feature of dynamic systems, is especially important in design tasks such as prediction and control. Thus, there is a need to develop methodologies that provide stability guarantees. To that end, we leverage the parameterization of stable matrices proposed in [Gillis/Sharma, Automatica, 2017] to realize the desired models. Furthermore, to avoid the estimation of derivative information to learn continuous systems, we formulate the inference problem in an integral form. We also discuss a few extensions, including those related to control systems. Numerical experiments show that the combination of a stable matrix parameterization and an integral form of differential equations allows us to learn stable systems without requiring derivative information, which can be challenging to obtain in situations with noisy or limited data.