Uniformly stable numerical schemes for the Boltzmann equation preserving the compressible Navier–Stokes asymptotics

In this paper, we develop a numerical method to solve Boltzmann like equations of kinetic theory which is able to capture the compressible Navier–Stokes dynamics at small Knudsen numbers. Our approach is based on the micro/macro decomposition technique, which applies to general collision operators. This decomposition is performed in all the phase space and leads to an equivalent formulation of the Boltzmann (or BGK) equation that couples a kinetic equation with macroscopic ones. This new formulation is then discretized with a semi-implicit time scheme combined with a staggered grid space discretization. Finally, several numerical tests are presented in order to illustrate the efficiency of our approach. Incidentally, we also introduce in this paper a modification of a standard splitting method that allows to preserve the compressible Navier–Stokes asymptotics in the case of the simplified BGK model. Up to our knowledge, this property is not known for general collision operators.     

一个新的用于不可压磁流体动力学的格子波尔兹曼模型

绝大多数现有的格子波尔兹曼磁流体动力学模型其实是用可压缩方法来模拟不可压磁流体。而这些可压缩效应在数值模拟中往往会带来意想不到的误差。在这篇文章中，我们提出了一个全新的可用于的不可压格子波尔兹曼磁流体动力学模型，并且进行了哈特曼流的数值模拟。模拟结果与哈特曼流的解析解非常吻合。这个方法需要一个假设条件来消除误差。我们做了大量的数值试验，并且与Dellar教授的模型进行了详细的分析与比较。     

A unified gas-kinetic scheme for continuum and rarefied flows

With discretized particle velocity space, a multiscale unified gas-kinetic scheme for entire Knudsen number flows is constructed based on the BGK model. The current scheme couples closely the update of macroscopic conservative variables with the update of microscopic gas distribution function within a time step. In comparison with many existing kinetic schemes for the Boltzmann equation, the current method has no difficulty to get accurate Navier–Stokes (NS) solutions in the continuum flow regime with a time step being much larger than the particle collision time. At the same time, the rarefied flow solution, even in the free molecule limit, can be captured accurately. The unified scheme is an extension of the gas-kinetic BGK-NS scheme from the continuum flow to the rarefied regime with the discretization of particle velocity space. The success of the method is due to the un-splitting treatment of the particle transport and collision in the evaluation of local solution of the gas distribution function. For these methods which use operator splitting technique to solve the transport and collision separately, it is usually required that the time step is less than the particle collision time. This constraint basically makes these methods useless in the continuum flow regime, especially in the high Reynolds number flow simulations. Theoretically, once the physical process of particle transport and collision is modeled statistically by the kinetic Boltzmann equation, the transport and collision become continuous operators in space and time, and their numerical discretization should be done consistently. Due to its multiscale nature of the unified scheme, in the update of macroscopic flow variables, the corresponding heat flux can be modified according to any realistic Prandtl number. Subsequently, this modification effects the equilibrium state in the next time level and the update of microscopic distribution function. Therefore, instead of modifying the collision term of the BGK model, such as ES-BGK and BGK–Shakhov, the unified scheme can achieve the same goal on the numerical level directly. Many numerical tests will be used to validate the unified method.     

Lattice Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook Simulations in 2-D Incompressible Magnetohydrodynamics

Lattice Boltzmann Method is recently developed within numerical schemes for simulating a variety of physical systems. In this paper a new lattice Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (LBGK) model for two-dimensional incompressible magnetohydrodynamics (IMHD) is presented. The model is an extension of a hydrodynamics lattice BGK model with 9 velocities on a square lattice, resulting in a model with 17 velocities. Most of the existing LBGK models for MHD can be viewed as compressible schemes to simulate incompressible flows. The compressible effect might lead to some undesirable errors in numerical simulations. In our model the compressible effect has been overcome successfully. The model is then applied to the Hartmann flow, giving reasonable results.     

Lattice Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook Simulations in 2-D Incompressible Magnetohydrodynamics

Lattice Boltzmann Method is recently developed within numerical schemes for simulating a variety of physical systems. In this paper a new lattice.Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook （LBGK） model for two-dimensional incompressible magnetohydrodynamics （IMHD） is presented. The model is an extension of a hydrodynamics lattice BGK model with 9 velocities on a square lattice, resulting in a model with 17 velocities. Most of the existing LBGK models for MHD can be viewed as compressible schemes to simulate incompressible flows. The compressible effect might lead to some undesirable errors in numerical simulations. In our model the compressible effect has been overcome successfully. The model is then applied to the Hartmann flow, giving reasonable results.     

Diffusion Lattice Boltzmann Scheme on a Orthorhombic Lattice

We present a diffusion lattice Boltzmann (DLB) scheme which is derived from first principles. As opposed to the traditional lattice BGK schemes the DLB is valid for orthorhombic lattices and it has two eigenvalues of the collision operator. It is shown that the diffusion coefficient depends only on one eigenvalue of the collision operator. Hence, the DLB scheme can be optimized with means of the additional eigenvalue of the collision operator and with different lattice spacing along the principal axes. The properties of the DLB scheme concerning consistency, stability, and accuracy are studied with eigenmode analysis. This analysis shows that the DLB scheme is consistent with diffusion for a wide range of diffusion coefficients, it has unconditional stability, and that it has third-order accuracy. Furthermore, it is shown that accuracy is improved by setting the additional eigenvalue to zero and by densifying the lattice spacing along the direction of the density gradient.     

Accuracy analysis of high-order lattice Boltzmann models for rarefied gas flows

In this work, we have theoretically analyzed and numerically evaluated the accuracy of high-order lattice Boltzmann (LB) models for capturing non-equilibrium effects in rarefied gas flows. In the incompressible limit, the LB equation is shown to be able to reduce to the linearized Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook (BGK) equation. Therefore, when the same Gauss–Hermite quadrature is used, LB method closely resembles the discrete velocity method (DVM). In addition, the order of Hermite expansion for the equilibrium distribution function is found not to be directly correlated with the approximation order in terms of the Knudsen number to the BGK equation for incompressible flows. Meanwhile, we have numerically evaluated the LB models for a standing-shear-wave problem, which is designed specifically for assessing model accuracy by excluding the influence of gas molecule/surface interactions at wall boundaries. The numerical simulation results confirm that the high-order terms in the discrete equilibrium distribution function play a negligible role in capturing non-equilibrium effect for low-speed flows. By contrast, appropriate Gauss–Hermite quadrature has the most significant effect on whether LB models can describe the essential flow physics of rarefied gas accurately. Our simulation results, where the effect of wall/gas interactions is excluded, can lead to conclusion on the LB modeling capability that the models with higher-order quadratures provide more accurate results. For the same order Gauss–Hermite quadrature, the exact abscissae will also modestly influence numerical accuracy. Using the same Gauss–Hermite quadrature, the numerical results of both LB and DVM methods are in excellent agreement for flows across a broad range of the Knudsen numbers, which confirms that the LB simulation is similar to the DVM process. Therefore, LB method can offer flexible models suitable for simulating continuum flows at the Navier–Stokes level and rarefied gas flows at the linearized Boltzmann model equation level.     

Non-local closure and parallel performance of lattice Boltzmann models for some plasma physics problems

The lattice Boltzmann (LB) method is a mesoscopic approach to solving nonlinear macroscopic conservation equations. Because the LB algorithm yields a simple collide-stream sequence it has been extensively applied to Navier–Stokes flows, but its MHD counterpart is less well known in the plasma physics community. Several plasma problems that should be amenable to LB are discussed. In particular, Landau damping—a collisionless kinetic phenomenon of wave–particle interaction—can be studied by LB since non-local macroscopic closures have been generated by plasma physicists. The parallel performance of 2D LB codes for MHD are presented, including scaling performance on the Earth Simulator.     

A Lattice Boltzmann Kinetic Model for Microflow and Heat Transfer

In this paper, we propose a lattice Boltzmann BGK model for simulation of micro flows with heat transfer based on kinetic theory and the thermal lattice Boltzmann method (He et al., J. Comp. Phys. 146:282, 1998). The relaxation times are redefined in terms of the Knudsen number and a diffuse scattering boundary condition (DSBC) is adopted to consider the velocity slip and temperature jump at wall boundaries. To check validity and potential of the present model in modelling the micro flows, two two-dimensional micro flows including thermal Couette flow and thermal developing channel flow are simulated and numerical results obtained compare well with previous studies of the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC), molecular dynamics (MD) approaches and the Maxwell theoretical analysis     

Flux Limiter Lattice Boltzmann Scheme Approach to Compressible Flows with Flexible Specific-Heat Ratio and Prandtl Number

We further develop the lattice Boltzmann (LB) model [Physica A 382 (2007) 502] for compressible flows from two aspects. Firstly, we modify the Bhatnagar--Gross-Krook (BGK) collision term in the LB equation, which makes the model suitable for simulating flows with different Prandtl numbers. Secondly, the flux limiter finite difference (FLFD) scheme is employed to calculate the convection term of the LB equation, which makes the unphysical oscillations at
discontinuities be effectively suppressed and the numerical dissipations be significantly diminished. The proposed model is validated by recovering results of some well-known benchmarks, including (i) The thermal Couette flow; (ii) One- and two-dimensional Riemann problems. Good agreements are obtained
between LB results and the exact ones or previously reported solutions. The flexibility, together with the high accuracy of the new model, endows the proposed model considerable potential for tracking some long-standing problems and for investigating nonlinear nonequilibrium complex systems.     

格子Boltzmann亚格子模型的研究

为了将格子Boltzmann法应用于大雷诺数流动的模拟,本文将Smagorinsky亚格子模型和LBGK模型相结合,并对该亚格子LBM模型进行了研究。利用该亚格子LBM模型,对二维顶盖驱动流进行了模拟,得到了若干大雷诺数下流线图和方腔中心线上无量纲速度分布。计算结果与基准解进行比较,两者相互吻合。     

用格子Boltzmann模型模拟可压缩完全气体流动

采用一种新的格子Boltzmann模型模拟超音速流动。在这种模型中,粒子的速度不受限制,可以取得很广。而平衡分布函数的支集却相对集中,使模型得以简化。粒子速度的这种自适应特性允许流体以较高的马赫数流动。通过引入粒子的势能使得该模型适用于具有任意比热比的完全气体。利用Chapman-Enskog方法,从BGK型Boltzmann方程推导出Navier-Stokes方程。在六边形网格上模拟了马赫数为3的前台阶绕流,得到了合理的结果。     

A Multi-Speed Compressible Lattice-Boltzmann Model

An extension of the lattice Boltzmann BGK method to compressible flows is presented that combines three novel additions: (1) particles move density and energy weights in multiple velocity bins (11 for 1-D flow) to nearby cell centers. (2) the equilibrium distribution remains an unexpanded Maxwellian; and (3) transport and relaxation to equilibrium are performed implicitly at each node. These advances allow for the parallel modeling of high Mach number shocks and high Reynolds number flows, while avoiding advective numerical diffusion, the need for Riemann solvers, and non-linear limiters. A 1D shock tube application is shown. Generalization to higher dimensions and multi-materials are discussed.     

Asymptotic Analysis of Lattice Boltzmann Boundary Conditions

In this article, we use a general method for the analysis of finite difference schemes to investigate lattice Boltzmann algorithms for Navier–Stokes problems with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Several link based boundary conditions for commonly used lattice Boltzmann BGK models are considered. With our method, the accuracy of the algorithms can be exactly predicted. Moreover, the analytical results can be used to construct new algorithms which is demonstrated with a corrected bounce back rule that requires only local evaluations but still yields second order accuracy for the velocity. The analysis is applicable to general geometries and instationary flows     

格子Boltzmann方法求解Burgers方程

众所周知,格子方法（包括格子气和格子Ｂｏｌｔｚｍａｎｎ方法）在计算物理领域取得巨大进展。与之形成鲜明对比,格子方法的数学理论始终处于停滞前的状况。为求解Ｂｕｒｇｅｒｓ方程,一类带有ＢＧＫ模型格子方法被构造出来,经过变量替换,发现他们属于三层非性差分方法。使用极值原理,给出此类格式稳定性的严格证明,最后,从数值实验中可以看出,使用ＬＢＭ得到的结果,与经典二阶守恒差分方法的结果符合得非常好。     

Discrete ellipsoidal statistical BGK model and Burnett equations

A new discrete Boltzmann model, the discrete ellipsoidal statistical Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook (ESBGK) model, is proposed to simulate nonequilibrium compressible flows. Compared with the original discrete BGK model, the discrete ES-BGK has a flexible Prandtl number. For the discrete ES-BGK model in the Burnett level, two kinds of discrete velocity model are introduced and the relations between nonequilibrium quantities and the viscous stress and heat flux in the Burnett level are established. The model is verified via four benchmark tests. In addition, a new idea is introduced to recover the actual distribution function through the macroscopic quantities and their space derivatives. The recovery scheme works not only for discrete Boltzmann simulation but also for hydrodynamic ones, for example, those based on the Navier–Stokes or the Burnett equations.     

A spectral-element discontinuous Galerkin lattice Boltzmann method for nearly incompressible flows

We present a spectral-element discontinuous Galerkin lattice Boltzmann method for solving nearly incompressible flows. Decoupling the collision step from the streaming step offers numerical stability at high Reynolds numbers. In the streaming step, we employ high-order spectral-element discontinuous Galerkin discretizations using a tensor product basis of one-dimensional Lagrange interpolation polynomials based on Gauss–Lobatto–Legendre grids. Our scheme is cost-effective with a fully diagonal mass matrix, advancing time integration with the fourth-order Runge–Kutta method. We present a consistent treatment for imposing boundary conditions with a numerical flux in the discontinuous Galerkin approach. We show convergence studies for Couette flows and demonstrate two benchmark cases with lid-driven cavity flows for Re = 400–5000 and flows around an impulsively started cylinder for Re = 550–9500. Computational results are compared with those of other theoretical and computational work that used a multigrid method, a vortex method, and a spectral element model.     

A lattice Boltzmann method for immiscible multiphase flow simulations using the level set method

We consider the lattice Boltzmann method for immiscible multiphase flow simulations. Classical lattice Boltzmann methods for this problem, e.g. the colour gradient method or the free energy approach, can only be applied when density and viscosity ratios are small. Moreover, they use additional fields defined on the whole domain to describe the different phases and model phase separation by special interactions at each node. In contrast, our approach simulates the flow using a single field and separates the fluid phases by a free moving interface. The scheme is based on the lattice Boltzmann method and uses the level set method to compute the evolution of the interface. To couple the fluid phases, we develop new boundary conditions which realise the macroscopic jump conditions at the interface and incorporate surface tension in the lattice Boltzmann framework. Various simulations are presented to validate the numerical scheme, e.g. two-phase channel flows, the Young–Laplace law for a bubble and viscous fingering in a Hele-Shaw cell. The results show that the method is feasible over a wide range of density and viscosity differences.     

A time-reversal lattice Boltzmann method

In this paper we address the time-reversed simulation of viscous flows by the lattice Boltzmann method (LB). The theoretical derivation of the reversed LB from the Boltzmann equation is detailed, and the method implemented for weakly compressible flows using the D2Q9 scheme. The implementation of boundary conditions is also discussed. The accuracy and stability are illustrated by four test cases, namely the propagation of an acoustic wave in a medium at rest and in an uniform mean flow, the Taylor–Green vortex decay and the vortex pair–wall collision.