An Artificial Neural Networks Method for Solving Partial Differential Equations

While there already exists many analytical and numerical techniques for solving PDEs, this paper introduces an approach using artificial neural networks. The approach consists of a technique developed by combining the standard numerical method, finite-difference, with the Hopfield neural network. The method is denoted Hopfield-finite-difference (HFD). The architecture of the nets, energy function, updating equations, and algorithms are developed for the method. The HFD method has been used successfully to approximate the solution of classical PDEs, such as the Wave, Heat, Poisson and the Diffusion equations, and on a system of PDEs. The software Mat lab is used to obtain the results in both tabular and graphical form. The results are similar in terms of accuracy to those obtained by standard numerical methods. In terms of speed, the parallel nature of the Hopfield nets methods makes them easier to implement on fast parallel computers while some numerical methods need extra effort for parallelization.