Paper Detail

Continual-Learning Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Parameterized Partial Differential Equations

Xujia Chen, Xinyue Hu, Letian Chen, Yi Liu, Wenhui Fan

arxiv Score 12.5

Published 2026-08-05 · First seen 2026-08-06

Research Track A · General AI

Abstract

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) incorporate governing equations into neural-network training and can approximate PDE solutions without requiring large observational datasets. Parameterized PINNs (ParamPINNs) further take physical parameters as inputs, allowing a single model to represent a family of PDE solutions over a parameter domain. Existing ParamPINNs, however, still face inefficient training, uneven accuracy across parameters, and overfitting to a limited set of sampled parameter tasks, which can impair generalization to unsampled parameters. To address these issues, we propose a continual-learning physics-informed neural network (CL-PINN), which treats PDE instances at different parameter values as related tasks and learns them sequentially. CL-PINN combines Bayesian-optimization-based active parameter selection, task-wise dynamic loss weighting, sparse physics-constrained replay, and an optional parameter subnetwork to improve task allocation and knowledge retention under bounded active-task capacity. It requires no observational data and is designed to solve parameterized PDEs over relatively broad parameter domains under limited computational resources. Multi-seed evaluations on five benchmarks, including one continuous function and four parameterized PDEs, show that Bayesian selection substantially reduces objective-loss queries relative to grid-greedy search, while sparse replay mitigates forgetting of earlier tasks. Under the prescribed within-case resource protocols, CL-PINN generally provides higher and more balanced solution accuracy than fixed-sampling and grid-greedy baselines. CL-PINN offers a practical route toward learning PDE solutions that generalize across physical parameters and has the potential to support reusable physics-informed surrogates for large-scale engineering parameter studies.

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BibTeX

@article{chen2026continual,
  title = {Continual-Learning Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Parameterized Partial Differential Equations},
  author = {Xujia Chen and Xinyue Hu and Letian Chen and Yi Liu and Wenhui Fan},
  year = {2026},
  abstract = {Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) incorporate governing equations into neural-network training and can approximate PDE solutions without requiring large observational datasets. Parameterized PINNs (ParamPINNs) further take physical parameters as inputs, allowing a single model to represent a family of PDE solutions over a parameter domain. Existing ParamPINNs, however, still face inefficient training, uneven accuracy across parameters, and overfitting to a limited set of sampled parameter},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.04778},
  keywords = {cs.LG},
  eprint = {2608.04778},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
}

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