Thermal lattice Boltzmann method for complex microflows

Abstract

A methodology to simulate thermal fields in complex microflow geometries is proposed. For the flow fields, the regularized multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is applied coupled with the diffusive-bounce-back boundary condition for wall boundaries. For the thermal fields, the regularized lattice Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook model is applied. For the thermal wall boundary condition, a newly developed boundary condition, which is a mixture of the diffuse scattering and constant temperature conditions, is applied. The proposed set of schemes is validated by reference data in the Fourier flows and square cylinder flows confined in a microchannel. The obtained results confirm that it is essential to apply the regularization to the thermal LBM for avoiding kinked temperature profiles in complex thermal flows. The proposed wall boundary condition is successful to obtain thermal jumps at the walls with good accuracy.