Current status of Lattice Boltzmann Methods applied to aerodynamic, aeroacoustic, and thermal flows

Abstract

We present a review of the evolutionary advancement of the lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM) and current status of their applications in dealing with diverse flow problems such as advection-diffusion, forced convection, natural convection, conjugate heat transfer, radiative heat transfer, thermal flow through porous media, phase transition and phase separation, aerodynamics and aeroacoustics, and thermal jet flows. We analyze and discuss various thermal LBM frameworks and methodologies since the time of Lattice Gas Automata (LGA) to recently developed methods to model simple and complex aerodynamic, aeroacoustic and thermal flow problems. Multi-speed (M-S) models, hybrid LBM models, and double distribution function LBM (DDF-LBM) models, along with their applications and improvements are discussed in details. Moreover, the recent developments in addressing various applications such as energy storage devices, systems with electro-thermo convection, aerodynamic flows, simulations of noise profiles in nozzles with and without chevrons, and thermal simulations of jet flow with LBM are presented in great detail.