Node-Element Hypergraph Message Passing for Fluid Dynamics Simulations

A recent trend in deep learning research features the application of graph neural networks for mesh-based continuum mechanics simulations. Most of these frameworks operate on graphs in which each edge connects two nodes. Inspired by the data connectivity in the finite element method, we connect the nodes by elements rather than edges, effectively forming a hypergraph. We implement a message-passing network on such a node-element hypergraph and explore the capability of the network for the modeling of fluid flow. The network is tested on two common benchmark problems, namely the fluid flow around a circular cylinder and airfoil configurations. The results show that such a message-passing network defined on the node-element hypergraph is able to generate more stable and accurate temporal roll-out predictions compared to the baseline generalized message-passing network defined on a normal graph. Along with adjustments in activation function and training loss, we expect this work to set a new strong baseline for future explorations of mesh-based fluid simulations with graph neural networks.