Differentiable Hybrid Neural-CFD Modelling of Wall-Bounded Turbulence: Coupled Learning of Subgrid-Scale and Wall Closures

Abstract

Wall-modelled large-eddy simulation (WMLES) treats the subgrid-scale (SGS) closure, wall closure and numerical discretization as independent components, although their effects are coupled through the same resolved field. We present a differentiable hybrid neural--CFD framework in which the SGS and wall closures are learned jointly, end-to-end, within a differentiable flow solver, using only low-order statistics as training targets. Each closure is a composed neural operator: a trainable neural network followed by a fixed differentiable layer that preserves the structure of its conventional counterpart, so that the network learns only the functions left undetermined by the conventional form. Because every operation is differentiable, gradients of the training loss are back-propagated through the coupled solver, allowing both neural closures to be optimized consistently against the flow field, rather than fitted offline or in isolation. We demonstrate the framework, denoted Hybrid-Joint, on a zero-pressure-gradient turbulent boundary layer across a posteriori tests spanning Re_\theta = 600--6500, computational domains and mesh resolutions. The model outperforms WMLES baselines, extrapolates to more than four times the highest training Reynolds number, and transfers to grids and domains absent from training. It recovers a logarithmic mean-velocity region, not imposed by the wall closure, and reproduces the resolved energy spectra accurately, although spectral information is excluded from the training objective. Ablation studies show that learning either closure alone is insufficient and that only joint optimization recovers the full set of statistics, confirming that SGS closure, wall closure and discretization are coupled and must be trained jointly. Once trained, the closures are reused without retraining across all cases, so that training cost is amortized over repeated deployment.