Hybrid lattice-Boltzmann finite difference simulation of convective flows. (Q1430694)

The authors show that in order to simulate fluid flows that are weakly coupled to some quantity, like temperature in a convective situation, one can use the lattice-Boltzmann (LBE) equation to compute the fluid variables. The other quantity can be computed using finite difference techniques. For the cases that the authors studied, they found that the inherent numerical instabilities of LBE are not modified by the coupling with temperature. This is improvement compared to what is found in simulations of thermal systems using the full LBE model in which one includes the conservation of energy. Some extensions of hybrid schemes are discussed.