A coupled discrete unified gas-kinetic scheme for Boussinesq flows

TL;DR

This paper introduces a coupled discrete unified gas-kinetic scheme (DUGKS) for Boussinesq flows that independently models velocity and temperature fields, demonstrating high accuracy and stability in simulating natural convection across various flow regimes.

Contribution

The paper develops a thermal, coupled DUGKS for Boussinesq flows with independent velocity and temperature modeling, and proposes kinetic boundary conditions for both fields.

Findings

Second order spatial accuracy demonstrated.

Effective in simulating high Rayleigh number convection.

Enhanced numerical stability over previous models.

Abstract

Recently, the discrete unified gas-kinetic scheme (DUGKS) [Z. L. Guo \emph{et al}., Phys. Rev. E ${\bf 88}$, 033305 (2013)] based on the Boltzmann equation is developed as a new multiscale kinetic method for isothermal flows. In this paper, a thermal and coupled discrete unified gas-kinetic scheme is derived for the Boussinesq flows, where the velocity and temperature fields are described independently. Kinetic boundary conditions for both velocity and temperature fields are also proposed. The proposed model is validated by simulating several canonical test cases, including the porous plate problem, the Rayleigh-b\'{e}nard convection, and the natural convection with Rayleigh number up to $10^{10}$ in a square cavity. The results show that the coupled DUGKS is of second order accuracy in space and can well describe the convection phenomena from laminar to turbulent flows. Particularly, it is found that this new scheme has better numerical stability in simulating high Rayleigh number flows compared with the previous kinetic models.