SIMULATION OF TURBULENT FLOW OVER A BACKWARD FACING STEP USING LATTICE BOLTZMANN METHOD

Abstract

The lattice Boltzmann scheme for solving the equations governing the flow of fluids has become increasingly popular in recent years. In this method, a probability distribution function for the velocity of fluid elements is computed at each grid point, which contrasts with more established computational fluid dynamics methods, which solve for an average velocity. In this paper the effectiveness of the lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) as a computational tool for performing large-eddy simulations (LES) of turbulent flows was assessed. Three- dimensional turbulent flow over backward facing step was considered for this investigation. LBE-LES and Navier Stokes Direct Numerical Simulation (NS-DNS) results for this case has been compared and it was observed that the LBE-LES simulation is in good agreement with other computational simulations.

Keywords

• Lattice Boltzmann method
• Backward step
• Turbulent flow
• Large eddy simulation