Central moment lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is one of the more recent developments among the lattice kinetic schemes for computational fluid dynamics. A key element in this approach is the use of central moments to specify collision process and for
cing, and thereby naturally maintaining Galilean invariance, an important characteristic of fluid flows. When the different central moments are relaxed at different rates like in a standard multiple relaxation time (MRT) formulation based on raw moments, it is endowed with a number of desirable physical and numerical features. Since the collision operator exhibits a cascaded structure, this approach is also known as the cascaded LBM. While the cascaded LBM has been developed sometime ago, a systematic study of its numerical properties, such as accuracy, grid convergence and stability for well defined canonical problems is lacking and the present work is intended to fulfill this need. We perform a quantitative study of the performance of the cascaded LBM for a set of benchmark problems of differing complexity, viz., Poiseuille flow, decaying Taylor-Green vortex flow and lid-driven cavity flow. We first establish its grid convergence and demonstrate second order accuracy under diffusive scaling for both the velocity field and its derivatives, i.e. components of the strain rate tensor, as well. The method is shown to quantitatively reproduce steady/unsteady analytical solutions or other numerical results with excellent accuracy. Numerical experiments further demonstrate that the central moment MRT LBM results in significant stability improvements when compared with certain existing collision models at moderate additional computational cost.
Cascaded lattice-Boltzmann method (Cascaded-LBM) employs a new class of collision operators aiming to improve numerical stability. It achieves this and distinguishes from other collision operators, such as in the standard single or multiple relaxatio
n time approaches, by performing relaxation process due to collisions in terms of moments shifted by the local hydrodynamic fluid velocity, i.e. central moments, in an ascending order-by-order at different relaxation rates. In this paper, we propose and derive source terms in the Cascaded-LBM to represent the effect of external or internal forces on the dynamics of fluid motion. This is essentially achieved by matching the continuous form of the central moments of the source or forcing terms with its discrete version. Different forms of continuous central moments of sources, including one that is obtained from a local Maxwellian, are considered in this regard. As a result, the forcing terms obtained in this new formulation are Galilean invariant by construction. The method of central moments along with the associated orthogonal properties of the moment basis completely determines the expressions for the source terms as a function of the force and macroscopic velocity fields. In contrast to the existing forcing schemes, it is found that they involve higher order terms in velocity space. It is shown that the proposed approach implies generalization of both local equilibrium and source terms in the usual lattice frame of reference, which depend on the ratio of the relaxation times of moments of different orders. An analysis by means of the Chapman-Enskog multiscale expansion shows that the Cascaded-LBM with forcing terms is consistent with the Navier-Stokes equations. Computational experiments with canonical problems involving different types of forces demonstrate its accuracy.
