Multi-Label Phase Diagram Prediction in Complex Alloys via Physics-Informed Graph Attention Networks

arXiv cs.LG / 4/21/2026

📰 NewsDeveloper Stack & InfrastructureModels & Research

Key Points

  • The paper proposes a physics-informed graph attention network (GAT) to rapidly predict multi-label phase sets across the Ag–Bi–Cu–Sn alloy composition–temperature space, addressing the high cost and sparsity limitations of CALPHAD sampling.
  • Each composition–temperature point is encoded as a small graph with element nodes (using atomic fractions and elemental descriptors), and the model predicts nine relevant phases using graph attention, pooling, and an MLP.
  • Thermodynamic constraints are integrated either as training penalties or via inference-time projection to improve physical consistency of the predicted phase equilibria.
  • On equilibrium data generated with pycalphad (~25,000 states), the baseline model reaches macro-F1 = 0.951 and 93.98% exact-set match, while physics-informed decoding boosts exact-set accuracy to about 96% on dense in-domain grids.
  • The surrogate generalizes to an unseen ternary section (99.32% exact-set accuracy) and to a quaternary test at 700°C (91.78% accuracy), supporting its use for high-resolution phase mapping and extrapolative alloy screening.

Abstract

Accurate phase equilibria are foundational to alloy design because they encode the underlying thermodynamics governing stability, transformations, and processing windows. However, while the CALculation of Phase Diagrams (CALPHAD) provides a rigorous thermodynamic framework, exploring multicomponent composition-temperature space remains computationally expensive and is typically limited to sparse section. To enable rapid phase mapping and alloy screening, we propose a physics-informed graph attention network (GAT) that learns element-aware representations and couples them with thermodynamic constraints for multi-label phase-set prediction in the Ag-Bi-Cu-Sn alloy system. Using about 25,000 equilibrium states generated with pycalphad, each composition-temperature point is represented as a four-node element graph with atomic fractions and elemental descriptors as node features. The model combines graph attention, global pooling, and a multilayer perceptron to predict nine relevant phases. To improve physical consistency, we incorporate thermodynamic constraints, applied as training penalties or as an inference-time projection. Across six binary and three ternary subsystems, the baseline model achieves a macro-F1 score of 0.951 and 93.98% exact-set match, while physics-informed decoding improves robustness and raises exact-set accuracy to about 96% on dense in-domain grids. The surrogate also generalizes to an unseen ternary section with 99.32% exact-set accuracy and to a quaternary section at 700 {\deg}C with 91.78% accuracy. These results demonstrate that attention-based graph learning coupled with thermodynamic constraint enforcement provides an effective and physically consistent surrogate for high-resolution phase mapping and extrapolative alloy screening.