Numerical study of lattice Boltzmann methods for a convection–diffusion equation coupled with Navier–Stokes equations

Numerous lattice Boltzmann (LB) methods have been proposed for solution of the convection–diffusion equations (CDE). For the 2D problem, D2Q9, D2Q5 or D2Q4 velocity models are usually used. When LB convection–diffusion models are used to solve a CDE coupled with Navier–Stokes equations, boundary conditions are found to be critically important for accurately solving the coupled simulations. Following the idea of a regularized scheme (Latt et al 2008 Phys. Rev. E 77 056703), a regularized boundary condition for solving a CDE is proposed. A simple extrapolation scheme is also proposed for the Neumann boundary condition. Spatial accuracies of three existing and the proposed boundary conditions are discussed in details. The numerical evaluations are based on simulations of steady and unsteady natural convection flows in a cavity and an unsteady Taylor–Couette flow. Our studies show that the simplest D2Q4 model with terms of O(u) in the equilibrium distribution function is capable of obtaining results of equal accuracy as D2Q5 or D2Q9 models for the CDE. A slightly revised LB equation for solving a CDE that is used to cancel some unwanted terms does not seem to be necessary for incompressible flows. The regularized boundary condition for solving the CDE has second-order spatial accuracy and it is the best one in terms of the spatial accuracy. The regularized scheme and non-equilibrium extrapolation scheme are applicable to handle both the Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. For the Neumann boundary condition with zero flux, all the five boundary conditions are applicable to give accurate results and the bounce-back scheme is the simplest one. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version) 1751-8113/11/055001+18$33.00 © 2011 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK & the USA 1 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 44 (2011) 055001 H-B Huang et al