Greedy Kernel Methods for Approximating Breakthrough Curves for Reactive Flow from 3D Porous Geometry Data

We address the challenging application of 3D pore scale reactive flow under varying geometry parameters. The task is to predict time-dependent integral quantities, i.e., breakthrough curves, from the given geometries. As the 3D reactive flow simulation is highly complex and computationally expensive, we are interested in data-based surrogates that can give a rapid prediction of the target quantities of interest. This setting is an example of an application with scarce data, i.e., only having a few available data samples, while the input and output dimensions are high. In this scarce data setting, standard machine learning methods are likely to fail. Therefore, we resort to greedy kernel approximation schemes that have shown to be efficient meshless approximation techniques for multivariate functions. We demonstrate that such methods can efficiently be used in the high-dimensional input/output case under scarce data. Especially, we show that the vectorial kernel orthogonal greedy approximation (VKOGA) procedure with a data-adapted two-layer kernel yields excellent predictors for learning from 3D geometry voxel data via both morphological descriptors or principal component analysis.