Numerical simulation of dam break flow impact on vertical cylinder by cumulant lattice Boltzmann method

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to apply the cumulant lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) to simulate high Reynolds number free surface flows. The single-phase cumulant LBM is extended to solve the free surface flows by using the phase-field method as the interface capturing scheme. Numerical simulations are performed on an experimental problem of dam break flow impact on a vertical cylinder. Important numerical aspects such as collision model, grid resolution, time step and interface mobility parameter are investigated. It is found that the severe impact pressure oscillation in the simulation by the conventional SRT model, can be significantly suppressed by the cumulant model. Good agreement between the cumulant LBM numerical simulation and the experiment has been obtained on both the free surface profiles and the impact pressures. The numerical results obtained by the present study demonstrate that the cumulant LBM can be a powerful numerical tool for simulations of violent free surface flow problems.