Thread-safe multiphase lattice Boltzmann model for droplet and bubble dynamics at high density and viscosity contrasts

TL;DR

This paper introduces a high-order, thread-safe lattice Boltzmann method with an interface-capturing equation for simulating incompressible two-component fluids with high density and viscosity contrasts, suitable for high-performance computing.

Contribution

It develops a novel, thread-safe lattice Boltzmann model incorporating an interface-capturing equation, optimized for shared memory architectures and high-contrast fluid simulations.

Findings

Results agree with experimental data and literature simulations.

The method effectively simulates droplet and bubble dynamics.

Suitable for GPU-based high-performance computing applications.

Abstract

This study presents a high-order, thread-safe version of the lattice Boltzmann (LBM) method, incorporating an interface-capturing equation, based on the conservative Allen-Cahn equation, to simulate incompressible two-component systems with high-density and viscosity contrasts. The method utilizes a recently proposed thread-safe implementation optimized for shared memory architectures and it is employed to reproduce the dynamics of droplets and bubbles on several test cases with results in agreement with experiments and other numerical simulations from the literature. The proposed approach offers promising opportunities for high-performance computing simulations of realistic fluid systems with high-density and viscosity contrasts for advanced applications in environmental, atmospheric and meteorological flows, all the way down to microfluidic and biological systems, particularly on GPU-based architectures.