arXiv subjects

Benjamin Herrmann

Publications and source records attributed to Benjamin Herrmann.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Dynamic Reduced-Order Data Assimilation from Sparse Velocity Measurements

We present a novel reduced-order data assimilation framework, termed Reduced-Order Dynamical Assimilation (RODAS), for reconstructing high-resolution, time-resolved flow fields from sparse velocity measurements. The method combines low-dimensional experimental observations with a physics-based parametric reduced-order model, enabling both spatial extrapolation beyond the measurement region and temporal super-resolution. The approach first identifies the dominant dynamics from sparse measurements through Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD), and subsequently reconstructs the corresponding full-order flow evolution by projecting the identified dynamics onto a parametric Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) manifold generated from high-fidelity numerical simulations. Unlike conventional reduced-order data assimilation methods that estimate independent snapshots or treat time as an additional parameter, RODAS reconstructs an entire dynamical trajectory in a single inference step while naturally incorporating parametric variability. We assess the proposed methodology on vortex shedding behind a circular cylinder for both Newtonian and non-Newtonian (Carreau-Yasuda) fluids. Numerical experiments demonstrate accurate reconstruction of high-resolution velocity fields from localized, low-resolution measurements, achieving sub-percent reconstruction errors with sufficiently rich reduced bases, robust performance under severe temporal undersampling, and accurate prediction of engineering quantities of interest such as the drag coefficient. These results demonstrate that RODAS provides an efficient framework for real-time, physics-informed reconstruction of unsteady flows from sparse experimental data.

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arXiv2026

Data-driven linear analysis of dynamical systems via nonlinearity-subtracted dynamic mode decomposition

The Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD) has been consolidated as a basic tool for data-driven analysis of dynamical systems, allowing simultaneous identification of coherent structures and their dynamics from time-resolved measurements. However, with a linear regression at its core, DMD is unable to produce accurate models from recordings of dynamics that are inherently nonlinear, such as the response to large perturbations and the evolution on chaotic attractors. Recent approaches attempt to simultaneously fit the linear and nonlinear contributions to the dynamics by performing a regression onto a physically motivated model structure. However, although the resulting nonlinear models can produce accurate short-term predictions, their linearization does not necessarily agree with that of the original system. In this work, we introduce a novel data-driven method --- nonlinearity-subtracted DMD (NSDMD) --- that focuses on producing an accurate linearization of a system when the nonlinear contribution to its dynamics are available while the linear part is not. This scenario is encountered, for example, when the nonlinear terms in the governing equations are known, while the linear operator contains uncertain material properties or it accounts for the closure of unresolved dynamics. This also arises when the data is generated by a black-box simulation code that is able to output the nonlinearity, but not the action of the linear operator on the snapshots. NSDMD leverages data snapshots of the nonlinearity to explicitly account for the purely nonlinear contributions to the dynamics and formulate a regression problem that finds a low-rank approximation of the underlying linear operator. We demonstrate the approach on several numerical examples, showcasing its improved capabilities for data-driven linear analysis of chaotic, partially observed, advection-dominated, and high-dimensional dynamics.

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arXiv2026

Mean-flow-based reduced-order models of turbulent channel flow

Reduced-order models (ROMs) for turbulent flows based on Galerkin projection can achieve reasonable accuracy using equation-based modal bases derived from the linearized Navier-Stokes equations through the controllability and observability Gramians. The use of the modal bases obtained from linearized equations around a mean state has been seen to enhance the first- and second-order statistics in the ROM, but the use of the mean state was not necessarily extended to the equations of motion, as it implies the treatment of the divergence of the Reynolds stresses in the Galerkin projection. In this work, we present a mean-flow-based framework for ROMs in which the projection of the Reynolds stresses is solved through a modified modal basis and the knowledge of the mean flow. This framework achieves turbulence statistics comparable to those of a reference direct numerical simulation (DNS) in a minimal channel at $Re_{\tau} \approx 185$. Short-time forecasting with this framework is assessed, where balanced truncation modal bases outperform controllability modes in ROMs, yielding a reconstruction of the velocity field comparable to the Galerkin projection of proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) modes. This framework can extend analysis based on linearisations around the mean turbulent flow, which became widespread in recent years, to include explicitly non-linear interactions between modes, enabling accurate models at higher Reynolds number.

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arXiv2026

Data-driven linear analysis of turbulent flows

Mean-flow-based linear analyses of turbulent flows, such as resolvent analysis, provide valuable insight about flow structures and their dynamics that has been widely leveraged to model, control and understand the underlying flow physics. However, these analyses are computationally expensive for flows over complex geometries and require the use of specialized codes that are typically only available in research environments. On the other hand, data-driven modal decompositions, such as the dynamic mode decomposition (DMD), identify turbulent flow structures that, although statistically relevant, do not provide insight into the physical mechanisms driving their dynamics. Here we introduce a novel data-driven method -- nonlinearity-subtracted DMD (NSDMD) -- that leverages knowledge of the structure of the Navier--Stokes equations to ensure that the learned operator is a low-rank approximation of the underlying mean-flow-linearized dynamics. Specifically, the method uses snapshots of the nonlinear terms in the perturbation equations to explicitly account for the contribution of the nonlinear forcing to the dynamics. We demonstrate the use of NSDMD to perform data-driven resolvent analysis on direct numerical simulation (DNS) and large-eddy simulation (LES) datasets, starting with a minimal channel flow and scaling up to the flow over a full aircraft model. As a result, NSDMD allows performing linear analyses of turbulent flows as a post-processing step on simulation data obtained with any available high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code.

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arXiv2025

Train yourself: self-compressing reduced-order models of turbulent flows

Reduced-order models (ROMs) of turbulent flows based on Galerkin projection often require many degrees of freedom to resolve the dynamics of the turbulence, or simulation data to obtain an optimal modal basis. However, obtaining simulation data is computationally expensive, and the amount of data required to obtain a converged modal basis can increase this cost. Using the linearized Navier-Stokes equations, one can achieve spatial modes through the controllability and observability Gramians, which can yield a ROM without prior simulation data. In this work, we propose a self-compression of a ROM based on controllability modes, where the time series of the modal coefficients are leveraged to reduce the dimension of the ROM. In the self-compressed ROM (SCROM), we can maintain accurate first- and second-order statistics with respect to the DNS simulation, but in a further reduced dimension. The SCROM recovers spatial structures equivalent to proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) without relying on any simulation data, recombining spatial modes from linearized equations. This method leads to a novel ROM that can represent turbulence statistics in a data-free approach in a further reduced state space.

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arXiv2025

SINDy on slow manifolds

The sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) has been established as an effective method to learn interpretable models of dynamical systems from data. However, for high-dimensional slow-fast dynamical systems, the regression problem becomes simultaneously computationally intractable and ill-conditioned. Although, in principle, modeling only the dynamics evolving on the underlying slow manifold addresses both of these challenges, the truncated fast variables have to be compensated by including higher-order nonlinearities as candidate terms for the model, leading to an explosive growth in the size of the SINDy library. In this work, we develop a SINDy variant that is able to robustly and efficiently identify slow-fast dynamics in two steps: (i) identify the slow manifold, that is, an algebraic equation for the fast variables as functions of the slow ones, and (ii) learn a model for the dynamics of the slow variables restricted to the manifold. Critically, the equation learned in (i) is leveraged to build a manifold-informed function library for (ii) that contains only essential higher-order nonlinearites as candidate terms. Rather than containing all monomials of up to a certain degree, the resulting custom library is a sparse subset of the latter that is tailored to the specific problem at hand. The approach is demonstrated on numerical examples of a snap-through buckling beam and the flow over a NACA 0012 airfoil. We find that our method significantly reduces both the condition number and the size of the SINDy library, thus enabling accurate identification of the dynamics on slow manifolds.

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arXiv2024

Interpretable low-order representation of eigenmode deformation in parameterized dynamical systems

Modal analysis has long been consolidated as a basic tool to interpret dynamics and build low-order models of mechanical, thermal, and fluid systems. Eigenmodes arising from the spectral decomposition of the underlying linearized dynamics represent spatial patterns in vibration, temperature, or velocity fields associated with simple time dynamics. However, for systems that depend on one or more parameters, eigenmodes obtained for one set of parameter values are not necessarily dynamically relevant in other regions of parameter space. In this work, we formulate a method to obtain an optimal orthogonal basis of eigen-deformation modes (EDMs) that capture eigenmode variations across a range of parameter values. Through numerical examples of common parameterized dynamical systems in engineering, we show that EDMs are useful for parameterized model reduction and to provide physical insight into the effects of parameter changes on the underlying dynamics.

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arXiv2024

Multi-objective SINDy for parameterized model discovery from single transient trajectory data

The sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) has been established as an effective technique to produce interpretable models of dynamical systems from time-resolved state data via sparse regression. However, to model parameterized systems, SINDy requires data from transient trajectories for various parameter values over the range of interest, which are typically difficult to acquire experimentally. In this work, we extend SINDy to be able to leverage data on fixed points and/or limit cycles to reduce the number of transient trajectories needed for successful system identification. To achieve this, we incorporate the data on these attractors at various parameter values as constraints in the optimization problem. First, we show that enforcing these as hard constraints leads to an ill-conditioned regression problem due to the large number of constraints. Instead, we implement soft constraints by modifying the cost function to be minimized. This leads to the formulation of a multi-objective sparse regression problem where we simultaneously seek to minimize the error of the fit to the transients trajectories and to the data on attractors, while penalizing the number of terms in the model. Our extension, demonstrated on several numerical examples, is more robust to noisy measurements and requires substantially less training data than the original SINDy method to correctly identify a parameterized dynamical system.

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arXiv2023

From resolvent to Gramians: extracting forcing and response modes for control

During the last decade, forcing and response modes produced by resolvent analysis have demonstrated great potential to guide sensor and actuator placement and design in flow control applications. However, resolvent modes are frequency-dependent, which, although responsible for their success in identifying scale interactions in turbulence, complicates their use for control purposes. In this work, we seek orthogonal bases of forcing and response modes that are the most responsive and receptive, respectively, across all frequencies. We show that these frequency-independent bases of \emph{representative} resolvent modes are given by the eigenvectors of the observability and controllability Gramians of the system considering full state inputs and outputs. We present several numerical examples where we leverage these bases by building orthogonal or interpolatory projectors onto the dominant forcing and response subspaces. Gramian-based forcing modes are used to identify dynamically relevant disturbances, to place point sensors to measure disturbances, and to design actuators for feedforward control in the subcritical linearized Ginzburg--Landau equation. Gramian-based response modes are used to identify coherent structures and for point sensor placement aiming at state reconstruction in the turbulent flow in a minimal channel at $\mathrm{Re}_{\tau}=185$. The approach does not require data snapshots and relies only on knowledge of the steady or mean flow.

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arXiv2021

Physics-informed dynamic mode decomposition (piDMD)

In this work, we demonstrate how physical principles -- such as symmetries, invariances, and conservation laws -- can be integrated into the dynamic mode decomposition (DMD). DMD is a widely-used data analysis technique that extracts low-rank modal structures and dynamics from high-dimensional measurements. However, DMD frequently produces models that are sensitive to noise, fail to generalize outside the training data, and violate basic physical laws. Our physics-informed DMD (piDMD) optimization, which may be formulated as a Procrustes problem, restricts the family of admissible models to a matrix manifold that respects the physical structure of the system. We focus on five fundamental physical principles -- conservation, self-adjointness, localization, causality, and shift-invariance -- and derive several closed-form solutions and efficient algorithms for the corresponding piDMD optimizations. With fewer degrees of freedom, piDMD models are less prone to overfitting, require less training data, and are often less computationally expensive to build than standard DMD models. We demonstrate piDMD on a range of challenging problems in the physical sciences, including energy-preserving fluid flow, travelling-wave systems, the Schr\"odinger equation, solute advection-diffusion, a system with causal dynamics, and three-dimensional transitional channel flow. In each case, piDMD significantly outperforms standard DMD in metrics such as spectral identification, state prediction, and estimation of optimal forcings and responses.

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arXiv2021

Kernel Learning for Robust Dynamic Mode Decomposition: Linear and Nonlinear Disambiguation Optimization (LANDO)

Research in modern data-driven dynamical systems is typically focused on the three key challenges of high dimensionality, unknown dynamics, and nonlinearity. The dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) has emerged as a cornerstone for modeling high-dimensional systems from data. However, the quality of the linear DMD model is known to be fragile with respect to strong nonlinearity, which contaminates the model estimate. In contrast, sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) learns fully nonlinear models, disambiguating the linear and nonlinear effects, but is restricted to low-dimensional systems. In this work, we present a kernel method that learns interpretable data-driven models for high-dimensional, nonlinear systems. Our method performs kernel regression on a sparse dictionary of samples that appreciably contribute to the underlying dynamics. We show that this kernel method efficiently handles high-dimensional data and is flexible enough to incorporate partial knowledge of system physics. It is possible to accurately recover the linear model contribution with this approach, disambiguating the effects of the implicitly defined nonlinear terms, resulting in a DMD-like model that is robust to strongly nonlinear dynamics. We demonstrate our approach on data from a wide range of nonlinear ordinary and partial differential equations that arise in the physical sciences. This framework can be used for many practical engineering tasks such as model order reduction, diagnostics, prediction, control, and discovery of governing laws.

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arXiv2020

Data-driven resolvent analysis

Resolvent analysis identifies the most responsive forcings and most receptive states of a dynamical system, in an input--output sense, based on its governing equations. Interest in the method has continued to grow during the past decade due to its potential to reveal structures in turbulent flows, to guide sensor/actuator placement, and for flow control applications. However, resolvent analysis requires access to high-fidelity numerical solvers to produce the linearized dynamics operator. In this work, we develop a purely data-driven algorithm to perform resolvent analysis to obtain the leading forcing and response modes, without recourse to the governing equations, but instead based on snapshots of the transient evolution of linearly stable flows. The formulation of our method follows from two established facts: $1)$ dynamic mode decomposition can approximate eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the underlying operator governing the evolution of a system from measurement data, and $2)$ a projection of the resolvent operator onto an invariant subspace can be built from this learned eigendecomposition. We demonstrate the method on numerical data of the linearized complex Ginzburg--Landau equation and of three-dimensional transitional channel flow, and discuss data requirements. The ability to perform resolvent analysis in a completely equation-free and adjoint-free manner will play a significant role in lowering the barrier of entry to resolvent research and applications.

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arXiv2020

Modeling synchronization in forced turbulent oscillator flows

Periodically forced, oscillatory fluid flows have been the focus of intense research for decades due to their richness as a nonlinear dynamical system and their relevance to applications in transportation, aeronautics, and energy conversion. Recently, it has been observed that turbulent bluff-body wakes exhibit a subharmonic resonant response when excited with specific spatial symmetries at twice the natural vortex shedding frequency, which is hypothesized to be caused by triadic interactions. The focus of this paper is to provide new physical insight into the dynamics of turbulent oscillator flows, based on improved mechanistic models informed by a comprehensive experimental study of the turbulent wake behind a D-shaped body under periodic forcing. We confirm for the first time the role of resonant triadic interactions in the forced flow by studying the dominant components in the power spectra across multiple excitation frequencies and amplitudes. We then develop an extended Stuart-Landau model for the forced global wake mode, incorporating parametric and non-harmonic forcing. This model captures the system dynamics and reveals the boundaries of multiple synchronization regions. Further, it is possible to identify model coefficients from sparse measurement data, making it applicable to a wide range of turbulent oscillator flows. We believe these generalized synchronization models will be valuable for prediction, control, and understanding of the underlying physics in this ubiquitous class of flows.

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