arXiv AI

Physics-guided surrogate learning enables zero-shot control of turbulent wings

arXiv:2604. 09434v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Turbulent boundary layers over aerodynamic surfaces are a major source of aircraft drag, yet their control remains challenging due to multiscale dynamics and spatial variability, particularly under adverse pressure gradients.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 3

Wind-Aware Reinforcement Learning Control of a Small Quadrotor Using Learned Onboard Wind Estimation in Simulated Atmospheric Turbulence

arXiv:2607. 01528v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Small multirotor aircraft are increasingly tasked with operations in the atmospheric boundary layer, where turbulent winds comparable to the vehicle's airspeed degrade trajectory tracking and can defeat conventional feedback control.

By Abdullah Al Tasim, Wei Sun
arXiv AI
Jul 1

The HydroGym Reinforcement Learning Platform for Fluid Dynamics

arXiv:2512. 17534v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Modeling and controlling fluids is critical across science and engineering.

By Christian Lagemann, Sajeda Mokbel, Miro Gondrum, Mario R\"uttgers, Yuning Wang, Pol Su\'arez, Ludger Paehler, Deniz A. Bezgin, Aaron B. Buhendwa, Jared L. Callaham, Samuel Ahnert, Nicholas Zolman, Xiao Shao, Jean-Christophe Loiseau, Nikolaus Adams, Matthias Meinke, Wolfgang Schr\"oder, Kai Lagemann, Esther Lagemann, Ricardo Vinuesa, Steven L. Brunton
arXiv Machine Learning
2d ago

Glass-Box Deep Reinforcement Learning for High-Speed Flow Control

The article discusses how glass-box deep reinforcement learning (DRL) can discover actuation strategies for high‑speed, nonlinear, unsteady flows without explicit models, potentially revealing mechanisms beyond classical control. It highlights the challenges of applying DRL to real high‑speed flows, including simulation cost, data efficiency, sensing in extreme environments, reward design, explainability, and generalization across Mach and Reynolds numbers. The authors argue that overcoming these constraints will require physics‑aware learning, robust real‑time operation, and extensive validation to translate DRL capabilities into reliable, certified technology.

By Ameya D. Jagtap
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 15

Gradient-free learning of a closed-loop wall controller for turbulent drag reduction

arXiv:2607. 12626v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Closed-loop wall control learnt by multi-agent reinforcement learning can lower skin-friction drag in turbulent channels, but these gradient-based policies are trained on small periodic boxes and exhibit reduced performance when carried over to a larger domain.

By Giorgio Maria Cavallazzi, Miguel P\'erez Cuadrado, Alfredo Pinelli
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 10

FALCON-S: Fixed-wing ground-effect Aerodynamics Simulator and Flight Control Learning Suite

FALCON‑S is a modular, high‑fidelity simulator designed for fixed‑wing aerial robots operating near the ground. It models full 6DoF rigid‑body physics, semi‑empirical ground‑effect aerodynamics, actuator dynamics, sensor noise, and environmental disturbances, and supports both CPU and GPU backends via Torch and NVIDIA Warp for large‑scale reinforcement learning and optimal control. The framework offers a unified interface for various controllers, including RL and optical control algorithms, and allows cross‑validation with X‑Plane and JSBSim for engineering integration and visual fidelity.

By Matteo El Hariry, Pedro Lima, Andrej Orsula, Matthieu Geist, Miguel Olivares-Mendez
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 14

Gradient-free learning of a closed-loop wall controller for turbulent drag reduction

Closed-loop wall control learnt by multi-agent reinforcement learning can lower skin-friction drag in turbulent channels, but these gradient-based policies are trained on small periodic boxes and exhibit reduced performance when carried over to a larger domain. We recently showed that such policies are also prone to saturated bang-bang actuations that collapse into standing streamwise waves whose scale is set by the computational box rather than by the near-wall cycle, and proposed architectural fixes that avoid these degeneracies.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 7

A Data Fusion Framework for Grounding Aerospace Surrogate Model via Experimental Wind-Tunnel Observations

The paper introduces a correction framework that grounds a CFD-trained deep learning surrogate model for aerospace aerodynamics using wind‑tunnel pressure‑sensor (PSP) data. By training a correction network on spatially registered PSP measurements at two Mach numbers, the authors adjust the surrogate’s predictions without retraining its core parameters, achieving improved agreement with experimental pressure distributions—especially at the wing suction peak and shock location. The grounded surrogate matches measurements within 2.3–2.7% of the Cp range on unseen angles of attack and outperforms simple interpolation between measured states.

By Nitin Nagesh Kulkarni, Dheeraj Vemula, Yin Yu, Peter Lyu, Juan J. Alonso
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 2

VATO: A Vortex-Force-Aware Transformer Operator for Unsteady Separated Aerofoil Flows

The paper introduces VATO, a Vortex-Force-Aware Transformer Operator designed to predict unsteady separated flows around aerofoils more accurately. VATO couples a Vortex Force Map (VFM) method with a geometry-aware neural operator, offering two variants: VATO‑S, which adds training-only supervision of local VFM force contributions, and VATO‑A, which prioritizes force-relevant source locations for residual cross attention. Evaluated on CFD data for double‑edged‑plate aerofoils, VATO‑S and VATO‑A reduce velocity, pressure, and vorticity errors by up to 15.8%, 7.5%, and 31.2% respectively, and improve aerodynamic force predictions even beyond the training range.

By Xingxin Yang, Zhan Zhang, Yichen Li, Juan Li