Simulation of free-surface flows using the Lattice Boltzmann method with the AMR technique

Abstract

High resolution grids are generally preferred near the free surface to capture desired phenomena. In the present paper, an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) framework based on the hash table data structure is introduced to the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). The AMR refinement criterion is based on the movement of the free surface captured through interface nodes. The performance of the AMR-based LBM solver is analyzed through several benchmark cases. Results show that the proposed numerical framework can properly track the free surface with a spatial convergence rate between the first and second order. In addition, the AMR framework is of benefit to efficiently simulating free-surface flows since it requires much less nodes to achieve high resolution near the interface.