Training machine learning tools such as neural networks require the availability of sizable data, which can be difficult for engineering and scientific applications where experiments or simulations are expensive. In this work, a novel multi-fidelity physics-constrained neural network is proposed to reduce the required amount of training data, where physical knowledge is applied to constrain neural networks, and multi-fidelity networks are constructed to improve training efficiency. A low-cost low-fidelity physics-constrained neural network is used as the baseline model, whereas a limited amount of data from a high-fidelity physics-constrained neural network is used to train a second neural network to predict the difference between the two models. The proposed framework is demonstrated with two-dimensional heat transfer, phase transition, and dendritic growth problems, which are fundamental in materials modeling. Physics is described by partial differential equations. With the same set of training data, the prediction error of physics-constrained neural network can be one order of magnitude lower than that of the classical artificial neural network without physical constraints. The accuracy of the prediction is comparable to those from direct numerical solutions of equations.

Phase field method (PFM) is a simulation tool to predict microstructural evolution during solidification and is helpful to establish the process-structure relationship for alloys. The robustness of the relationship however is affected by model-form and parameter uncertainties in PFM. In this paper, the uncertainty associated with the thermodynamic and process parameters of PFM is studied and quantified. Surrogate modeling is used to interpolate four quantities of interests (QoIs), including dendritic perimeter, area, primary arm length, and solute segregation, as functions of thermodynamic and process parameters. A sparse grid approach is applied to mitigate the curse-of-dimensionality computational burden in uncertainty quantification. Polynomial chaos expansion is employed to obtain the probability density functions of the QoIs. The effect of parameter uncertainty on the Al–Cu dendritic growth during solidification simulation are investigated. The results show that the dendritic morphology varies significantly with respect to the interface mobility and the initial temperature.