paper

Machine-Learning-Enhanced Discretize-then-Project Reduced-Order Modeling of Turbulent Flows on Collocated Grids

arXiv:2601.18817 · doi:10.1016/j.compfluid.2026.107315

Abstract

This study presents a hybrid reduced-order modeling (ROM) framework for incompressible flows on collocated finite-volume grids, combining a discretize-then-project consistent-flux formulation for velocity and pressure with a non-intrusive neural-network closure for turbulent viscosity. The intrusive formulation preserves discrete mass conservation and pressure-velocity coupling, while a reduced pressure reference-cell constraint fixes pressure gauge ambiguity. We evaluate Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Transformer, and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) closures. For a three-dimensional lid-driven cavity at , the LSTM-based ROM achieves relative errors of 0.7% in velocity and 4% in turbulent viscosity. At , a mode-sensitivity study identifies POD modes as the best overall configuration, balancing accuracy, dimension, robustness, and cost. It yields a final relative velocity error of approximately 12.3% and an online wall-clock speedup of approximately over the full-order model; energy and enstrophy errors remain below 11% for all three architectures. This regime requires case-specific neural-network retraining and pressure reference-cell parameter retuning. In a time-extrapolation test trained on ,s and rolled out to ,s, the ROM remains bounded, although velocity and pressure errors increase beyond the training window. The LSTM turbulent-viscosity closure remains robust, identifying long-horizon pressure accuracy as the main limitation. These results demonstrate the potential of consistent projection-based modeling combined with data-driven turbulence closure for efficient reduced-order simulation.

arXiv comment42 pages, 21 figures, and 5 tables. Revised manuscript with additional experiments, methodological clarifications, and an updated title. Preprint submitted to a journal