The Lattice Boltzmann Method Using Parallel Computation: A Great Potential Solution for Various Complicated Acoustic Problems

Abstract

This paper proposes the D2Q5 Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) method, in two dimensions with five discrete lattice velocities, for simulating linear sound wave propagation in closed rooms. A second-order linear acoustic equation obtained from the LBM method was used as the model equation. Boundary conditions at the domain boundary use the bounce-back scheme. The LBM numerical calculation algorithm in this paper is relatively simpler and easy to implement. Parallelization with the GPU CUDA was implemented to speed up the execution time. The calculation results show that the use of parallel GPU CUDA programming can accelerate the proposed simulation 27.47 times faster than serial CPU programming. The simulation results are validated with analytical solutions for acoustic pulse reflected by the flat and oblique walls, the comparisons show very good concordance, and the D2Q5 LBM has second-order accuracy. In addition, the simulation results in the form of wavefront propagation images in complicated shaped rooms are also compared with experimental photographs, and the comparison also shows excellent concordance. The numerical results of the D2Q5 LBM are promising and also demonstrate the great capability of the D2Q5 LBM for investigating room acoustics in various complexities.

Keywords

• parallel computation
• lattice Boltzmann method
• pulse propagation
• acoustic