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Originally, the color-gradient model proposed by Rothman and Keller (R-K) was unable to simulate immiscible two-phase flows with different densities. Later, a revised version of the R-K model was proposed by Grunau et al. [D. Grunau, S. Chen and K. Eggert, Phys. Fluids A: Fluid Dyn. 5, 2557 (1993).] and claimed it was able to simulate two-phase flows with high-density contrast. Some studies investigate high-density contrast two-phase flows using this revised R-K model but they are mainly focused on the stationary spherical droplet and bubble cases. Through theoretical analysis of the model, we found that in the recovered Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations which are derived from the R-K model, there are unwanted extra terms. These terms disappear for simulations of two-phase flows with identical densities, so the correct N-S equations are fully recovered. Hence, the R-K model is able to give accurate results for flows with identical densities. However, the unwanted terms may affect the accuracy of simulations significantly when the densities of the two fluids are different. For the simulations of spherical bubbles and droplets immersed in another fluid (where the densities of the two fluids are different), the extra terms may not be important and hence, in terms of surface tension, accurate results can be obtained. However, generally speaking, the unwanted term may be significant in many flows and the R-K model is unable to obtain the correct results due to the effect of the extra terms. Through numerical simulations of parallel two-phase flows in a channel, we confirm that the R-K model is not appropriate for general two-phase flows with different densities. A scheme to eliminate the unwanted terms is also proposed and the scheme works well for cases of density ratios less than 10. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isothermal gas flow in microtubes with a sudden expansion or contraction is studied numerically by lattice Boltzmann method. An axisymmetric D2Q9 model is used to simulate gas slip flow in micro-circular pipes. With the boundary condition combined specular and bounce-back schemes, the computed results are in excellent agreement with analytical solution for straight microtube. For the gas flow in the expanded or constricted tubes, we carried out simulations of several Knudsen numbers with inlet/outlet pressure ratio 3. It is found the pressure drop in each section can be predicted well by the theory of straight tubes. For smaller Knudsen number, flow separation in the expanded tube is observed. While for large Knudsen number, there is no vortex at corner and the streamlines are attached to boundary. In the constricted tube, the vortex at corner is very weak. These results are consistent with some experimental conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper an accurate axisymmetric lattice Boltzmann D2Q9 model is proposed to simulate the steady and pulsatile flows in circular pipes. Present model is derived from an incompressible D2Q9 model and some errors in a previous model [Halliday et al., Phys. Rev. E64, 011208 (2001)] are revised. In the previous model, some terms relative to the radial velocity are missing and would lead to large error for constricted or expanded pipe flows. Present model is validated by cases of laminar steady flow through constricted tubes and 3D Womersley flow. Comparing with the previous model, our model is much more accurate for steady flow in constricted circular pipes. For 3D Womersley flow, it is also observed that the present model can reduce the compressibility effect in previous model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a recent curved non-slip wall boundary treatment for isothermal Lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) [Z. Guo, C. Zheng and B. Shi, Phys. Fluids14(6) (2002)] is extended to handle the thermal curved wall boundary for a double-population thermal lattice Boltzmann equation (TLBE). The unknown distribution population at a wall node which is necessary to fulfill streaming step is decomposed into its equilibrium and non-equilibrium parts. The equilibrium part is evaluated according to Dirichlet and Neumann boundary constraints, and the non-equilibrium part is obtained using a first-order extrapolation from fluid lattices. To validate the thermal boundary condition treatment, we carry out numerical simulations of Couette flow between two circular cylinders, the natural convection in a square cavity, and the natural convection in a concentric annulus between an outer square cylinder and an inner circular cylinder. The results agree very well with analytical solution or available data in the literature. Our numerical results also demonstrate that the TLBE together with the present boundary scheme is of second-order accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel flexible forcing immersed boundary and lattice Boltzmann method (IB-LBM) is introduced in this paper. In the conventional IB-LBM scheme, explicit calculation of the force density term may not guarantee exact satisfaction of the no-slip boundary condition. This produces unphysical streamline penetration into the solid object. In this study, an implicit approach is followed where the force density is obtained from the unknown velocity correction with a unique single Lagrangian velocity correction term and flexible number of forcing steps. The proposed algorithm is computationally efficient and easy for new code development. Also the algorithm is found advantageous for unsteady flow case where no-slip condition is accurately satisfied. Flow past circular cylinder is studied for both steady and unsteady flow cases to validate the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]