A filter-based, mass-conserving lattice Boltzmann method for immiscible multiphase flows

Some issues of He-Chen-Zhang lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) method (referred as HCZ model) (J. Comput. Physics 1999; 152:642-663) for immiscible multiphase flows with large density ratio are assessed in this paper. An extended HCZ model with a filter technique and mass correction procedure is proposed based on HCZ's LBE multiphase model. The original HCZ model is capable of maintaining a thin interface but is prone to generating unphysical oscillations in surface tension and index function at moderate values of density ratio. With a filtering technique, the monotonic variation of the index function across the interface is maintained with larger density ratio. Kim's surface tension formulation for diffuse-interface method (J. Comput. Physics 2005; 204: 784-804) is then used to remove unphysical oscillation in the surface tension. Furthermore, as the density ratio increases, the effect of velocity divergence term neglected in the original HCZ model causes significant unphysical mass sources near the interface. By keeping the velocity divergence term, the unphysical mass sources near the interface can be removed with large density ratio. The long-time accumulation of the modeling and/or numerical errors in the HCZ model also results in the error of mass conservation of each dispersed phase. A mass correction procedure is devised to improve the performance of the method in this regard. For flows over a stationary and a rising bubble, and capillary waves with density ratio up to 100, the present approach yields solutions with interface thickness of about five to six lattices and no long-time diffusion, significantly advancing the performance of the LBE method for multiphase flow simulations. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.