Fluctuating lattice Boltzmann method for the diffusion equation

Diffusion on a lattice: Transition rates, interactions, and memory effects

We analyze diffusion of particles on a two-dimensional square lattice. Each lattice site contains an arbitrary number of particles. Interactions affect particles only in the same site, and are macroscopically represented by the excess chemical potential. In a recent work, a general expression for transition rates between neighboring cells as functions of the excess chemical potential was derived. With transition rates, the mean-field tracer diffusivity, D^{MF}, is immediately obtained. The tracer diffusivity, D=D^{MF}f, contains the correlation factor f, representing memory effects. An analysis of the joint probability of having given numbers of particles at different sites when a force is applied to a tagged particle allows an approximate expression for f to be derived. The expression is applied to soft core interaction (different values for the maximum number of particles in a site are considered) and extended hard core.

Overrelaxation in a diffusive integer lattice gas

One of the most striking drawbacks of standard lattice gas methods over lattice Boltzmann methods is a much more limited range of transport parameters that can be achieved. It is common for lattice Boltzmann methods to use over-relaxation to achieve arbitrarily small transport parameters in the hydrodynamic equations. Here, we show that it is possible to implement over-relaxation for integer lattice gases. For simplicity, we focus here on lattice gases for the diffusion equation. We demonstrate that adding a flipping operation to lattice gases results in a multirelaxation time lattice Boltzmann scheme with over-relaxation in the Boltzmann limit.

Integer lattice gas with a sampling collision operator for the fluctuating diffusion equation

We developed an integer lattice gas method for the fluctuating diffusion equation. Such a method is unconditionally stable and able to recover the Poisson distribution for the microscopic densities. A key advance for integer lattice gases introduced in this paper is a sampling collision operator that replaces particle collisions with sampling from an equilibrium distribution. This can increase the efficiency of our integer lattice gas by several orders of magnitude.

Molecular dynamics lattice gas equilibrium distribution function for Lennard-Jones particles

The molecular dynamics lattice gas (MDLG) method maps a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation onto a lattice gas using a coarse-graining procedure. This is a novel fundamental approach to derive the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) by taking a Boltzmann average over the MDLG. A key property of the LBM is the equilibrium distribution function, which was originally derived by assuming that the particle displacements in the MD simulation are Boltzmann distributed. However, we recently discovered that a single Gaussian distribution function is not sufficient to describe the particle displacements in a broad transition regime between free particles and particles undergoing many collisions in one time step. In a recent publication, we proposed a Poisson weighted sum of Gaussians which shows better agreement with the MD data. We derive a lattice Boltzmann equilibrium distribution function from the Poisson weighted sum of Gaussians model and compare it to a measured equilibrium distribution function from MD data and to an analytical approximation of the equilibrium distribution function from a single Gaussian probability distribution function. This article is part of the theme issue 'Progress in mesoscale methods for fluid dynamics simulation'.

Nonuniqueness of fluctuating momentum in coarse-grained systems

Coarse-grained descriptions of microscopic systems often require a mesoscopic definition of momentum. The question arises as to the uniqueness of such a momentum definition at a particular coarse-graining scale. We show here that particularly the fluctuating properties of common definitions of momentum in coarse-grained methods like lattice gas and lattice Boltzmann do not agree with a fundamental definition of momentum. In the case of lattice gases, the definition of momentum will even disagree in the limit of large wavelength. For short times we derive analytical representations for the distribution of different momentum measures and thereby give a full account of these differences.

Discrete Boltzmann trans-scale modeling of high-speed compressible flows

We present a general framework for constructing trans-scale discrete Boltzmann models (DBMs) for high-speed compressible flows ranging from continuum to transition regime. This is achieved by designing a higher-order discrete equilibrium distribution function that satisfies additional nonhydrodynamic kinetic moments. To characterize the thermodynamic nonequilibrium (TNE) effects and estimate the condition under which the DBMs at various levels should be used, two measures are presented: (i) the relative TNE strength, describing the relative strength of the (N+1)th order TNE effects to the Nth order one; (ii) the TNE discrepancy between DBM simulation and relevant theoretical analysis. Whether or not the higher-order TNE effects should be taken into account in the modeling and which level of DBM should be adopted is best described by the relative TNE intensity and/or the discrepancy rather than by the value of the Knudsen number. As a model example, a two-dimensional DBM with 26 discrete velocities at Burnett level is formulated, verified, and validated.

Integer lattice gas with Monte Carlo collision operator recovers the lattice Boltzmann method with Poisson-distributed fluctuations

We examine a new kind of lattice gas that closely resembles modern lattice Boltzmann methods. This new kind of lattice gas, which we call a Monte Carlo lattice gas, has interesting properties that shed light on the origin of the multirelaxation time collision operator, and it derives the equilibrium distribution for an entropic lattice Boltzmann. Furthermore these lattice gas methods have Galilean invariant fluctuations given by a Poisson statistics, giving further insight into the properties that we should expect for fluctuating lattice Boltzmann methods.

Fourth-order analysis of a diffusive lattice Boltzmann method for barrier coatings

We examine the applicability of diffusive lattice Boltzmann methods to simulate the fluid transport through barrier coatings, finding excellent agreement between simulations and analytical predictions for standard parameter choices. To examine more interesting non-Fickian behavior and multiple layers of different coatings, it becomes necessary to explore a wider range of parameters. However, such a range of parameters exposes deficiencies in such an implementation. To investigate these discrepancies, we examine the form of higher-order terms in the hydrodynamic limit of our lattice Boltzmann method. We identify these corrections to fourth order and validate these predictions with high accuracy. However, it is observed that the validated correction terms do not fully explain the bulk of observed error. This error was instead caused by the standard finite boundary conditions for the contact of the coating with the imposed environment. We identify a self-consistent form of these boundary conditions for which these errors are dramatically reduced. The instantaneous switching used as a boundary condition for the barrier problem proves demanding enough that any higher-order corrections meaningfully contribute for a small range of parameters. There is a large parameter space where the agreement between simulations and analytical predictions even in the second-order form are below 0.1%, making further improvements to the algorithm unnecessary for such an application.