Fluid motion driven by thermal effects, such as that due to buoyancy in differentially heated three-dimensional (3D) enclosures, arise in several natural settings and engineering applications. It is represented by the solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations (NSE) in conjunction with the thermal energy transport equation represented as a convection-diffusion equation (CDE) for the temperature field. In this study, we develop new 3D lattice Boltzmann (LB) methods based on central moments and using multiple relaxation times for the three-dimensional, fifteen velocity (D3Q15) lattice, as well as it subset, i.e. the three-dimensional, seven velocity (D3Q7) lattice to solve the 3D CDE for the temperature field in a double distribution function framework. Their collision operators lead to a cascaded structure involving higher order terms resulting in improved stability. In this approach, the fluid motion is solved by another 3D cascaded LB model from prior work. Owing to the differences in the number of collision invariants to represent the dynamics of flow and the transport of the temperature field, the structure of the collision operator for the 3D cascaded LB formulation for the CDE is found to be markedly different from that for the NSE. The new 3D cascaded (LB) models for thermal convective flows are validated for natural convection of air driven thermally on two vertically opposite faces in a cubic cavity enclosure at different Rayleigh numbers against prior numerical benchmark solutions. Results show good quantitative agreement of the profiles of the flow and thermal fields, and the magnitudes of the peak convection velocities as well as the heat transfer rates given in terms of the Nusselt number.
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