Symbolic regression development of empirical equations for diffusion in Lennard-Jones fluids.

Symbolic regression (SR) with a multi-gene genetic program has been used to elucidate new empirical equations describing diffusion in Lennard-Jones (LJ) fluids. Examples include equations to predict self-diffusion in pure LJ fluids and equations describing the finite-size correction for self-diffusion in binary LJ fluids. The performance of the SR-obtained equations was compared to that of both the existing empirical equations in the literature and to the results from artificial neural net (ANN) models recently reported. It is found that the SR equations have improved predictive performance in comparison to the existing empirical equations, even though employing a smaller number of adjustable parameters, but show an overall reduced performance in comparison to more extensive ANNs.