SUMMARYCentral moment lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is one of the more recent developments among the lattice kinetic schemes for computational fluid dynamics. A key element in this approach is the use of central moments to specify the collision process and forcing, and thereby naturally maintaining Galilean invariance, an important characteristic of fluid flows. When the different central moments are relaxed at different rates like in a standard multiple relaxation time (MRT) formulation based on raw moments, it is endowed with a number of desirable physical and numerical features. Because the collision operator exhibits a cascaded structure, this approach is also known as the cascaded LBM. While the cascaded LBM has been developed sometime ago, a systematic study of its numerical properties, such as the accuracy, grid convergence, and stability for well-defined canonical problems is lacking, and the present work is intended to fulfill this need. We perform a quantitative study of the performance of the cascaded LBM for a set of benchmark problems of differing complexity, viz., Poiseuille flow, decaying Taylor-Green vortex flow, and lid-driven cavity flow. We first establish its grid convergence and demonstrate second-order accuracy under diffusive scaling for both the velocity field and its derivatives, that is, the components of the strain rate tensor, as well. The method is shown to quantitatively reproduce steady/unsteady analytical solutions or other numerical results with excellent accuracy. The cascaded MRT LBM based on the central moments is found to be of similar accuracy when compared with the standard MRT LBM based on the raw moments, when a detailed comparison of the flow fields are made, with both reproducing even the small scale vortical features well. Numerical experiments further demonstrate that the central moment MRT LBM results in significant stability improvements when compared with certain existing collision models at moderate additional computational cost.

Fluid motion driven by thermal effects, such as that due to buoyancy in differentially heated three-dimensional (3D) enclosures, arise in several natural settings and engineering applications. It is represented by the solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations (NSE) in conjunction with the thermal energy transport equation represented as a convection-diffusion equation (CDE) for the temperature field. In this study, we develop new 3D lattice Boltzmann (LB) methods based on central moments and using multiple relaxation times for the three-dimensional, fifteen velocity (D3Q15) lattice, as well as it subset, i.e. the three-dimensional, seven velocity (D3Q7) lattice to solve the 3D CDE for the temperature field in a double distribution function framework. Their collision operators lead to a cascaded structure involving higher order terms resulting in improved stability. In this approach, the fluid motion is solved by another 3D cascaded LB model from prior work. Owing to the differences in the number of collision invariants to represent the dynamics of flow and the transport of the temperature field, the structure of the collision operator for the 3D cascaded LB formulation for the CDE is found to be markedly different from that for the NSE. The new 3D cascaded (LB) models for thermal convective flows are validated for natural convection of air driven thermally on two vertically oppo-site faces in a cubic cavity enclosure at different Rayleigh numbers against prior numerical benchmark solutions. Results show good quantitative agreement of the profiles of the flow and thermal fields, and the magnitudes of the peak convection velocities as well as the heat transfer rates given in terms of the Nusselt number.

Simulating inhomogeneous flows with different characteristic scales in different coordinate directions using the collide-and-stream based lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM) can be accomplished efficiently using rectangular lattice grids. We develop and investigate a new rectangular central moment LBM based on non-orthogonal moment basis (referred to as RC-LBM). The equilibria to which the central moments relax under collision in this approach are obtained from matching with those corresponding to the continuous Maxwell distribution.A Chapman-Enskog analysis is performed to derive the correction terms to the second order moment equilibria involving the grid aspect ratio and velocity gradients that restores the isotropy of the viscous stress tensor and eliminates the non-Galilean invariant cubic velocity terms of the resulting hydrodynamical equations. A special case of this rectangular formulation involving the raw moments (referred to as the RNR-LBM) is also constructed. The resulting schemes represent a considerable simplification, especially for the transformation matrices and isotropy corrections, and improvement over the existing MRT-LB schemes on rectangular lattice grids that use orthogonal moment basis. Numerical validation study of both the RC-LBM and RNR-LBM for a variety of benchmark flow problems are performed that show good accuracy at various grid aspect ratios. The ability of our proposed schemes to simulate flows using relatively lower grid aspect ratios than considered in prior rectangular LB approaches is demonstrated. Furthermore, simulations reveal the superior stability characteristics of the RC-LBM over RNR-LBM in handling shear flows at lower viscosities and/or higher characteristic velocities.

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Operator split forcing schemes exploiting a symmetrization principle, i.e., Strang splitting, for cascaded lattice Boltzmann (LB) methods in two- and three-dimensions for fluid flows with impressed local forces are presented. Analogous scheme for the passive scalar transport represented by a convection-diffusion equation with a source term in a novel cascaded LB formulation is also derived. They are based on symmetric applications of the split solutions of the changes on the scalar field or fluid momentum due to the sources or forces over half time steps before and after the collision step. The latter step is effectively represented in terms of the post-collision change of moments at zeroth and first orders, respectively, to represent the effect of the sources on the scalar transport and forces on the fluid flow. Such symmetrized operator split cascaded LB schemes are consistent with the second-order Strang splitting and naturally avoid any discrete effects due to forces or sources by appropriately projecting their effects for higher-order moments. All the force or source implementation steps are performed only in the moment space and they do not require formulations as extra terms and their additional transformations to the velocity space. These result in particularly simpler and efficient schemes to incorporate forces or sources in the cascaded LB methods unlike those considered previously. Numerical study for various benchmark problems in 2D and 3D for fluid flow problems with body forces and scalar transport with sources demonstrate the validity and accuracy, as well as the second-order convergence rate of the symmetrized operator split forcing or source schemes for the cascaded LB methods.

Lattice Boltzmann (LB) models used for the computation of fluid flows represented by the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations on standard lattices can lead to non-Galilean-invariant (GI) viscous stress involving cubic velocity errors. This arises from the dependence of their third-order diagonal moments on the first-order moments for standard lattices, and strategies have recently been introduced to restore Galilean invariance without such errors using a modified collision operator involving corrections to either the relaxation times or the moment equilibria. Convergence acceleration in the simulation of steady flows can be achieved by solving the preconditioned NS equations, which contain a preconditioning parameter that can be used to tune the effective sound speed, and thereby alleviating the numerical stiffness. In the present paper, we present a GI formulation of the preconditioned cascaded central-moment LB method used to solve the preconditioned NS equations, which is free of cubic velocity errors on a standard lattice, for steady flows. A Chapman-Enskog analysis reveals the structure of the spurious non-GI defect terms and it is demonstrated that the anisotropy of the resulting viscous stress is dependent on the preconditioning parameter, in addition to the fluid velocity. It is shown that partial correction to eliminate the cubic velocity defects is achieved by scaling the cubic velocity terms in the off-diagonal third-order moment equilibria with the square of the preconditioning parameter. Furthermore, we develop additional corrections based on the extended moment equilibria involving gradient terms with coefficients dependent locally on the fluid velocity and the preconditioning parameter. Such parameter dependent corrections eliminate the remaining truncation errors arising from the degeneracy of the diagonal third-order moments and fully restore Galilean invariance without cubic defects for the preconditioned LB scheme on a standard lattice. Several conclusions are drawn from the analysis of the structure of the non-GI errors and the associated corrections, with particular emphasis on their dependence on the preconditioning parameter. The GI preconditioned central-moment LB method is validated for a number of complex flow benchmark problems and its effectiveness to achieve convergence acceleration and improvement in accuracy is demonstrated.

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