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What’s the most difficult question you’ve been asked as a maintenance instructor?
Blye Widmar
"Where are the prints?!"
This was the final question in an onslaught of verbal feedback, comments, and critiques I received from my students back in 2019. I had two years of instructor experience and was teaching a class that had been meticulously rehearsed in preparation for an accreditation visit. I knew the training material well and transferred that knowledge effectively enough for all the students to pass the class. As we wrapped up, I asked the students how they felt about my first big system-level class, and they did not hold back.
“Why was the exam from memory when we don’t work from memory in the plant?” “Why didn’t we refer to the vendor documents?” “Why didn’t we practice more on the mock-up?” And so on.
Laura Laghi, Enrico Schiassi, Mario De Florio, Roberto Furfaro, Domiziano Mostacci
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 9 | September 2023 | Pages 2373-2403
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2160604
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This work aims to solve six problems with four different physics-informed machine learning frameworks and compare the results in terms of accuracy and computational cost. First, we considered the diffusion-advection-reaction equations, which are second-order linear differential equations with two boundary conditions. The first algorithm is the classic Physics-Informed Neural Networks. The second one is Physics-Informed Extreme Learning Machine. The third framework is Deep Theory of Functional Connections, a multilayer neural network based on the solution approximation via a constrained expression that always analytically satisfies the boundary conditions. The last algorithm is the Extreme Theory of Functional Connections (X-TFC), which combines Theory of Functional Connections and shallow neural network with random features [e.g., Extreme Learning Machine (ELM)]. The results show that for these kinds of problems, ELM-based frameworks, especially X-TFC, overcome those using deep neural networks both in terms of accuracy and computational time.