Mitigating Gradient Pathology in PINNs through Aligned Constraint

摘要

While Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) are powerful for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs), their training is often paralyzed by gradient pathology. The gradients from PDE residuals and boundary constraints oppose each other, trapping the model in local minima. Current solutions, such as adaptive weighting or hard constraints, either fail to fundamentally resolve this ill-conditioning or are limited to simple geometries. In this study, we systematically analyzed the causes of this gradient pathology from the perspectives of loss landscapes and optimization dynamics. Based on the obtained conclusion, we propose Constraint-Aligned loss with Manifold Lifting (CAML). By reformulating all zeroth-order terms into aligned constraints, our method effectively mitigates gradient conflicts. In addition, we introduce a delay factor to help the optimizer skip the high-curvature area. Experiments demonstrate that our CAML significantly enhances numerical stability and efficiency in problems with composite boundary conditions. Our code is open-sourced on \href{https://anonymous.4open.science/r/CAML-2F81}{Anonymous Repository}.