Optimal Control of PDEs Using Physics-Informed Neural Networks

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) have recently become a popular method for solving forward and inverse problems governed by partial differential equations (PDEs). By incorporating the residual of the PDE into the loss function of a neural network-based surrogate model for the unknown state, PINNs can seamlessly blend measurement data with physical constraints. Here, we extend this framework to PDE-constrained optimal control problems, for which the governing PDE is fully known and the goal is to find a control variable that minimizes a desired cost objective. Importantly, we validate the performance of the PINN framework by comparing it to state-of-the-art adjoint-based optimization, which performs gradient descent on the discretized control variable while satisfying the discretized PDE. This comparison, carried out on challenging problems based on the nonlinear Kuramoto-Sivashinsky and Navier-Stokes equations, sheds light on the pros and cons of the PINN and adjoint-based approaches for solving PDE-constrained optimal control problems.