MeshODENet: A Graph-Informed Neural Ordinary Differential Equation Neural Network for Simulating Mesh-Based Physical Systems

Abstract

Abstract. The simulation of complex physical systems using a discretized mesh is a cornerstone of applied mechanics, but traditional numerical solvers are often computationally prohibitive for many-query tasks. While graph neural networks (GNNs) have emerged as powerful surrogate models for mesh-based data, their standard autoregressive application for long-term prediction is often plagued by error accumulation and instability. To address this, we introduce MeshODENet, a general framework that synergizes the spatial reasoning of GNNs with the continuous-time modeling of neural ordinary differential equations. We demonstrate the framework’s effectiveness and versatility on a series of challenging structural mechanics problems, including different elastic bodies undergoing large, nonlinear deformations. The results demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms baseline models in long-term predictive accuracy and stability, while achieving substantial computational speed-ups over traditional solvers. This work presents a powerful and generalizable approach for developing data-driven surrogates to accelerate the analysis and modeling of complex structural systems.