John Hopkins University
Assembly Line
US researchers develop speedy AI solver for engineering problems
Researchers from John Hopkins University have developed an AI that enables powerful modeling and physics simulations to be solved in seconds using desktop computers.
The DIMON (Diffeomorphic Mapping Operator Learning) AI has so far been used to model human hearts and predict the often-fatal condition of cardiac arrhythmia, reducing the time it takes to recommend treatments from a week to seconds. DIMON uses a generic approach to quickly predict solutions to partial differential equations, a process which up until now has been a time-consuming and computationally intense process.
The researchers have shown the same AI can be used to solve complex engineering problems, such as modeling how cars deform in a crash, how spacecraft respond to extreme environments, or how bridges resist stress. DIMON uses AI to understand how physical systems behave across different shapes, without needing to recalculate everything from scratch for each new shape. Instead of dividing shapes into grids and solving equations over and over, the AI predicts how factors such as heat, stress, or motion will behave based on patterns it has learned, making it much faster and more efficient in tasks like optimizing designs or modeling shape-specific scenarios.