Liqing Yue's research while affiliated with Huazhong University of Science and Technology and other places

In this paper, we present an improved phase-field-based lattice Boltzmann (LB) method for thermocapillary flows with large density, viscosity, and thermal conductivity ratios. The present method uses three LB models to solve the conservative Allen-Cahn equation, the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, and the temperature equation. To overcome the difficulty caused by the convection term in solving the convection-diffusion equation for the temperature field, we first rewrite the temperature equation as a diffuse equation where the convection term is regarded as the source term and then construct an improved LB model for the diffusion equation. The macroscopic governing equations can be recovered correctly from the present LB method; moreover, the present LB method is much simpler and more efficient. In order to test the accuracy of this LB method, several numerical examples are considered, including the planar thermal Poiseuille flow of two immiscible fluids, the two-phase thermocapillary flow in a nonuniformly heated channel, and the thermocapillary Marangoni flow of a deformable bubble. It is found that the numerical results obtained from the present LB method are consistent with the theoretical prediction and available numerical data, which indicates that the present LB method is an effective approach for the thermocapillary flows.

Conjugate heat transfer problems are of great importance in many applications, while the available lattice Boltzmann (LB) models have some limitations in the study of such problems with the heterogeneous media. In this paper, we develop a new LB model for the conjugate heat transfer problems where the evolution equation with a modified equilibrium distribution function and a source term is considered. Through the Chapman–Enksog analysis, the macroscopic temperature equation can be recovered correctly. In order to test the accuracy, efficiency and stability of this LB model, some simple but nontrivial benchmark problems, including the planar thermal Poiseuille flow with two immiscible fluids, the conjugate heat transfer between a stratified heterogeneous medium with variable thermophysical properties, the steady and unsteady-state planer thermal flows with the two immiscible fluids, the steady-state conjugate heat transfer problem with a vertical interface, and the natural convection in a square cavity filled with circular and square rods, are studied. It is found that the results obtained from the present LB model are in good agreement with the analytic solutions or some previous works. In addition, it is also demonstrated that the developed LB model has a second-order convergence rate in space, and is more stable than some previous LB models. Finally, it should be noted that in our work, there is no special treatment to the interface, and the continuity conditions at the interface can be satisfied automatically.