A PINN-enriched finite element method for linear elliptic problems

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a hybrid method that combines finite element method (FEM) and physics-informed neural network (PINN) for solving linear elliptic problems. This method contains three steps: (1) train a PINN and obtain an approximate solution $u_θ$; (2) enrich the finite element space with $u_θ$; (3) obtain the final solution by FEM in the enriched space. In the second step, the enriched space is constructed by addition $v + u_θ$ or multiplication $v \cdot u_θ$, where $v$ belongs to the standard finite element space. We conduct the convergence analysis for the proposed method. Compared to the standard FEM, the same convergence order is obtained and higher accuracy can be achieved when solution derivatives are well approximated in PINN. Numerical examples from one dimension to three dimensions verify these theoretical results. For some examples, the accuracy of the proposed method can be reduced by a couple of orders of magnitude compared to the standard FEM.