English

Reliable and efficient steady CFD from surrogate predictions through Newton-Krylov correction

Fluid Dynamics 2026-08-05 v1

Abstract

Neural surrogates offer a promising route to accelerating computationally expensive simulations governed by partial differential equations across science and industry. Their practical deployment, however, is limited by unreliable predictions under out-of-distribution (OOD) conditions. We develop a solver-coupled surrogate-Newton framework that uses surrogate predictions as high-quality initial guesses for Newton-Krylov iterations, thereby combining rapid global flow-field prediction with high-accuracy numerical convergence at the terminal stage. On an OOD benchmark comprising geometries sampled from actual transonic airfoil optimization trajectories, the framework lowers the median residual L_2 ratio by over seven orders of magnitude while substantially reducing field and aerodynamic errors. In practical supercritical airfoil optimization, it improves online prediction reliability while achieving a 15.5-fold generation-level speedup over CFD. We further test the framework's extension to three dimensions using a flying-wing dataset. Together, these studies demonstrate the potential of surrogate-Newton coupling to deliver accurate, efficient and scalable steady CFD across industrial workflows.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.04400,
  title  = {Reliable and efficient steady CFD from surrogate predictions through Newton-Krylov correction},
  author = {Mingcheng Lei and Weishao Tang and Yufei Zhang and Haixin Chen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.04400},
  year   = {2026}
}