Liquid-gas-solid flows with lattice Boltzmann: Simulation of floating bodies

This paper presents a model for the simulation of liquid-gas-solid flows by means of the lattice Boltzmann method. The approach is built upon previous works for the simulation of liquid-solid particle suspensions on the one hand, and on a liquid-gas free surface model on the other. We show how the two approaches can be unified by a novel set of dynamic cell conversion rules. For evaluation, we concentrate on the rotational stability of non-spherical rigid bodies floating on a plane water surface - a classical hydrostatic problem known from naval architecture. We show the consistency of our method in this kind of flows and obtain convergence towards the ideal solution for the measured heeling stability of a floating box.Comment: 22 pages, Preprint submitted to Computers and Mathematics with Applications Special Issue ICMMES 2011, Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference for Mesoscopic Methods in Engineering and Scienc

Lattice Boltzmann simulations of soft matter systems

This article concerns numerical simulations of the dynamics of particles immersed in a continuum solvent. As prototypical systems, we consider colloidal dispersions of spherical particles and solutions of uncharged polymers. After a brief explanation of the concept of hydrodynamic interactions, we give a general overview over the various simulation methods that have been developed to cope with the resulting computational problems. We then focus on the approach we have developed, which couples a system of particles to a lattice Boltzmann model representing the solvent degrees of freedom. The standard D3Q19 lattice Boltzmann model is derived and explained in depth, followed by a detailed discussion of complementary methods for the coupling of solvent and solute. Colloidal dispersions are best described in terms of extended particles with appropriate boundary conditions at the surfaces, while particles with internal degrees of freedom are easier to simulate as an arrangement of mass points with frictional coupling to the solvent. In both cases, particular care has been taken to simulate thermal fluctuations in a consistent way. The usefulness of this methodology is illustrated by studies from our own research, where the dynamics of colloidal and polymeric systems has been investigated in both equilibrium and nonequilibrium situations.Comment: Review article, submitted to Advances in Polymer Science. 16 figures, 76 page

Elastic response of a nematic liquid crystal to an immersed nanowire

We study the immersion of a ferromagnetic nanowire within a nematic liquid crystal using a lattice Boltzmann algorithm to solve the full three-dimensional equations of hydrodynamics. We present an algorithm for including a moving boundary, to simulate a nanowire, in a lattice Boltzmann simulation. The nematic imposes a torque on a wire that increases linearly with the angle between the wire and the equilibrium direction of the director field. By rotation of these nanowires, one can determine the elastic constants of the nematic.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Instability and treatments of the coupled discrete element and lattice Boltzmann method by the immersed moving boundary scheme

The immersed moving boundary (IMB) scheme has been extensively used to couple the discrete element method (DEM) with the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). In the literature, only the formulation of IMB for lattice nodal cells covered by a single‐solid particle was given. The treatment of situations where a nodal cell is covered by two or more solid particles is seldom discussed. It is found that some numerical instability can occur for such situations due to an inappropriate computation of the weighting function in the IMB formulation. This work presents an enhanced treatment that can resolve the issue and validates it using some benchmark tests. Furthermore, to avoid the extra costs associated with the treatment and simplify the complicated procedure introduced, a simplified IMB scheme is proposed. The accuracy of both enhanced and simplified IMB schemes are validated by test cases including single‐particle sedimentation, two‐particle drafting‐kissing‐tumbling phenomenon, and multiple‐particle sedimentation. Then, the robustness of both schemes is examined and discussed using a specially designed flow past cylinders test. The simplified IMB scheme is proved to be robust and sufficiently accurate and simpler and more effective than the enhanced scheme