Dynamic Reduced-Order Data Assimilation from Sparse Velocity Measurements

Abstract

We present a novel reduced-order data assimilation framework, termed Reduced-Order Dynamical Assimilation (RODAS), for reconstructing high-resolution, time-resolved flow fields from sparse velocity measurements. The method combines low-dimensional experimental observations with a physics-based parametric reduced-order model, enabling both spatial extrapolation beyond the measurement region and temporal super-resolution. The approach first identifies the dominant dynamics from sparse measurements through Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD), and subsequently reconstructs the corresponding full-order flow evolution by projecting the identified dynamics onto a parametric Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) manifold generated from high-fidelity numerical simulations. Unlike conventional reduced-order data assimilation methods that estimate independent snapshots or treat time as an additional parameter, RODAS reconstructs an entire dynamical trajectory in a single inference step while naturally incorporating parametric variability. We assess the proposed methodology on vortex shedding behind a circular cylinder for both Newtonian and non-Newtonian (Carreau-Yasuda) fluids. Numerical experiments demonstrate accurate reconstruction of high-resolution velocity fields from localized, low-resolution measurements, achieving sub-percent reconstruction errors with sufficiently rich reduced bases, robust performance under severe temporal undersampling, and accurate prediction of engineering quantities of interest such as the drag coefficient. These results demonstrate that RODAS provides an efficient framework for real-time, physics-informed reconstruction of unsteady flows from sparse experimental data.