Multiscale lattice Boltzmann approach to modeling gas flows

For multiscale gas flows, kinetic-continuum hybrid method is usually used to balance the computational accuracy and efficiency. However, the kinetic-continuum coupling is not straightforward since the coupled methods are based on different theoretical frameworks. In particular, it is not easy to recover the non-equilibrium information required by the kinetic method which is lost by the continuum model at the coupling interface. Therefore, we present a multiscale lattice Boltzmann (LB) method which deploys high-order LB models in highly rarefied flow regions and low-order ones in less rarefied regions. Since this multiscale approach is based on the same theoretical framework, the coupling process becomes simple. The non-equilibrium information will not be lost at the interface as low-order LB models can also retain this information. The simulation results confirm that the present method can achieve modeling accuracy with reduced computational cost.