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WeirNet: A Large-Scale 3D CFD Benchmark for Geometric Surrogate Modeling of Piano Key Weirs

Lisa Lüddecke, Michael Hohmann, Sebastian Eilermann, Jan Tillmann-Mumm, Pezhman Pourabdollah, Mario Oertel, Oliver Niggemann

Abstract

Reliable prediction of hydraulic performance is challenging for Piano Key Weir (PKW) design because discharge capacity depends on three-dimensional geometry and operating conditions. Surrogate models can accelerate hydraulic-structure design, but progress is limited by scarce large, well-documented datasets that jointly capture geometric variation, operating conditions, and functional performance. This study presents WeirNet, a large 3D CFD benchmark dataset for geometric surrogate modeling of PKWs. WeirNet contains 3,794 parametric, feasibility-constrained rectangular and trapezoidal PKW geometries, each scheduled at 19 discharge conditions using a consistent free-surface OpenFOAM workflow, resulting in 71,387 completed simulations that form the benchmark and with complete discharge coefficient labels. The dataset is released as multiple modalities compact parametric descriptors, watertight surface meshes and high-resolution point clouds together with standardized tasks and in-distribution and out-of-distribution splits. Representative surrogate families are benchmarked for discharge coefficient prediction. Tree-based regressors on parametric descriptors achieve the best overall accuracy, while point- and mesh-based models remain competitive and offer parameterization-agnostic inference. All surrogates evaluate in milliseconds per sample, providing orders-of-magnitude speedups over CFD runtimes. Out-of-distribution results identify geometry shift as the dominant failure mode compared to unseen discharge values, and data-efficiency experiments show diminishing returns beyond roughly 60% of the training data. By publicly releasing the dataset together with simulation setups and evaluation pipelines, WeirNet establishes a reproducible framework for data-driven hydraulic modeling and enables faster exploration of PKW designs during the early stages of hydraulic planning.

WeirNet: A Large-Scale 3D CFD Benchmark for Geometric Surrogate Modeling of Piano Key Weirs

Abstract

Reliable prediction of hydraulic performance is challenging for Piano Key Weir (PKW) design because discharge capacity depends on three-dimensional geometry and operating conditions. Surrogate models can accelerate hydraulic-structure design, but progress is limited by scarce large, well-documented datasets that jointly capture geometric variation, operating conditions, and functional performance. This study presents WeirNet, a large 3D CFD benchmark dataset for geometric surrogate modeling of PKWs. WeirNet contains 3,794 parametric, feasibility-constrained rectangular and trapezoidal PKW geometries, each scheduled at 19 discharge conditions using a consistent free-surface OpenFOAM workflow, resulting in 71,387 completed simulations that form the benchmark and with complete discharge coefficient labels. The dataset is released as multiple modalities compact parametric descriptors, watertight surface meshes and high-resolution point clouds together with standardized tasks and in-distribution and out-of-distribution splits. Representative surrogate families are benchmarked for discharge coefficient prediction. Tree-based regressors on parametric descriptors achieve the best overall accuracy, while point- and mesh-based models remain competitive and offer parameterization-agnostic inference. All surrogates evaluate in milliseconds per sample, providing orders-of-magnitude speedups over CFD runtimes. Out-of-distribution results identify geometry shift as the dominant failure mode compared to unseen discharge values, and data-efficiency experiments show diminishing returns beyond roughly 60% of the training data. By publicly releasing the dataset together with simulation setups and evaluation pipelines, WeirNet establishes a reproducible framework for data-driven hydraulic modeling and enables faster exploration of PKW designs during the early stages of hydraulic planning.
Paper Structure (35 sections, 10 equations, 14 figures, 9 tables)

This paper contains 35 sections, 10 equations, 14 figures, 9 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Datasets for Civil and Infrastructure Engineering
  4. Datasets and Models for Hydraulic and Flow Processes
  5. Dataset
  6. Geometry Generation
  7. CFD Simulation
  8. Computational Cost
  9. Dataset Structure
  10. Dataset Access
  11. Benchmark
  12. Dataset Analysis
  13. Surrogate Models and Representations
  14. PointNet (point cloud baseline)
  15. RegDGCNN (dynamic graph on point clouds)
  16. ...and 20 more sections

Figures (14)

  • Figure 1: Main geometric parameters of a rectangular PKW in plan view (left) and side view (right) defined by Pralong et al. pralong2011naming with $Q$ indicating the direction of flow.
  • Figure 2: Exemplary results of a CFD simulation of water over a PKW geometry.
  • Figure 3: Exemplary geometries from the dataset showing variations in key widths, overhang lengths and wall thickness.
  • Figure 4: Detailed presentation of geometric relationships between inlet and outlet key widths for TPKWs with $Q$ indicating the direction of flow.
  • Figure 5: Additional defined parameters at the PKW sidewall. Single parameters are shown on the left, while the corresponding reference locations are indicated on the right.
  • ...and 9 more figures