Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian unstructured finite-volume lattice-Boltzmann method for computing two-dimensional compressible inviscid flows over moving bodies

Kazem Hejranfar, Hossein Hashemi Nasab, and Mohammad Hadi Azampour

Phys. Rev. E 101, 023308 – Published 18 February 2020

Abstract

The objective of this study is to develop and apply an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian unstructured finite-volume lattice-Boltzmann method (ALE-FVLBM) for solving two-dimensional compressible inviscid flows around moving bodies. The two-dimensional compressible form of the LB equation is considered and the resulting LB equation is formulated in the ALE framework on an unstructured body-fitted mesh to correctly model the body shape and properly incorporate the mesh movement due to the body motion. The spatial discretization of the resulting system of equations is performed by a second-order cell-centered finite-volume method on arbitrary quadrilateral meshes and an implicit dual-time stepping method is utilized for the time integration. To stabilize the numerical solution, appropriate numerical dissipation terms are added to the formulation. At first, the shock tube problem is computed to examine the accuracy of the solution obtained by applying the proposed FVLBM for this unsteady test case which includes shock, expansion wave, and contact discontinuity in the flow domain. Then, the stationary isentropic vortex is simulated on both the stationary and moving meshes to assess the implementation of the geometric conservation law in enhancing the solution accuracy of the ALE-FVLBM. The compressible inviscid flow in the transonic regime is then computed around the stationary NACA0012 airfoil in order to further study the sensitivity of the solution method to the user defined parameters. Now, the transonic inviscid flow is simulated over the pitching or plunging NACA0012 airfoil to investigate the accuracy and capability of the proposed solution method (ALE-FVLBM) for the computation of the compressible flows over moving bodies. Finally, the pitching or plunging NACA0012 airfoil near the ground in the transonic inviscid flow is simulated as a practical and challenging problem to study the ground effect on the aerodynamic characteristics of the airfoil. It is indicated that the solution methodology proposed based on the finite-volume LBM formulated in the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian framework (ALE-FVLBM) is capable of accurately computing the compressible inviscid flows around the moving bodies with and without the ground effect.