Yuhao Quan, Hui Wang, Weile Lian, Zhi Wang, Xubo Yang
This paper presents a highly efficient and robust differentiable fluid framework centered on a novel surrogate gradient method that utilizes the flow map structural advantages. Our key insight reveals a significant misalignment between computational intensity and gradient importance during the backward pass. Specifically, we identify a physical duality within the adjoint process, revealing that the cross-step connections inherent in the flow map act as dominant gradient “highways” that propagate sensitivities over long horizons with high fidelity. Leveraging these insights, we develop a surrogate gradient model that retains these critical connections while pruning redundant adjoint computations in a physics-informed manner. Integrated with tailored acceleration techniques, our framework is successfully applied to diverse, challenging optimization tasks characterized by long time horizons and rich vorticity. Results demonstrate significant speedups and memory reductions while maintaining nearly-identical gradients compared to the full-gradient baseline.