Viscous flow computations with the method of lattice Boltzmann equation

The method of lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) is a kinetic-based approach for fluid flow computations. This method has been successfully applied to the multi-phase and multi-component flows. To extend the application of LBE to high Reynolds number incompressible flows, some critical issues need to be addressed, noticeably flexible spatial resolution, boundary treatments for curved solid wall, dispersion and mode of relaxation, and turbulence model. Recent developments in these aspects are highlighted in this paper. These efforts include the study of force evaluation methods, the development of multi-block methods which provide a means to satisfy different resolution requirement in the near wall region and the far field and reduce the memory requirement and computational time, the progress in constructing the second-order boundary condition for curved solid wall, and the analyses of the single-relaxation-time and multiple-relaxation-time models in LBE. These efforts have lead to successful applications of the LBE method to the simulation of incompressible laminar flows and demonstrated the potential of applying the LBE method to higher Reynolds flows. The progress in developing thermal and compressible LBE models and the applications of LBE method in multi-phase flows, multi-component flows, particulate suspensions, turbulent flow, and micro-flows are reviewed. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.