COMPUTATION OF TURBULENT NATURAL CONVECTION IN A RECTANGULAR CAVITY WITH THE FINITE-VOLUME BASED LATTICE BOLTZMANN METHOD

A numerical study of a turbulent natural convection in an enclosure with the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is presented. The primary emphasis of the present study is placed on investigation of accuracy and numerical stability of the LBM for the turbulent natural convection flow. A HYBRID method in which the thermal equation is solved by the conventional Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equation method while the conservation of mass and momentum equations are resolved by the LBM is employed in the present study. The elliptic-relaxation model is employed for the turbulence model and the turbulent heat fluxes are treated by the algebraic flux model. All the governing equations are discretized on a cell-centered, non-uniform grid using the finite-volume method. The convection terms are treated by a second-order central-difference scheme with the deferred correction way to ensure accuracy and stability of solutions. The present LBM is applied to the prediction of a turbulent natural convection in a rectangular cavity and the computed results are compared with the experimental data commonly used for the validation of turbulence models and those by the conventional finite-volume method. It is shown that the LBM with the present HYBRID thermal model predicts the mean velocity components and turbulent quantities which are as good as those by the conventional finite-volume method. It is also found that the accuracy and stability of the solution is significantly affected by the treatment of the convection term, especially near the wall.