Acceleration of Macrosegregation Simulation Based on Lattice Boltzmann Method

• Published in: ISIJ International Vol. 58; no. 1; pp. 114 - 122
• Main Authors: Ohno, Munekazu, Sato, Hayato
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Iron and Steel Institute of Japan 01-01-2018
• Subjects: casting; lattice Boltzmann method; macrosegregation; simulation; solidification
• ISSN: 0915-1559; 1347-5460
• DOI: 10.2355/isijinternational.ISIJINT-2017-375

Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM), newly developing technique of computational fluid dynamics, is coupled with solute and energy conservation equations to develop a macrosegregation simulation model (LBM-coupled model) with high computational efficiency. LBM does not require time-consuming calculations for correction of velocity and pressure of fluid in contrast to methods directly solving Navier-Stokes (NS) equation and, therefore, LBM is computationally efficient. In this study, the accuracy of the LBM-coupled model is investigated by calculating the steady state flows and by comparing the results with those of analytical solutions and a conventional model based on the NS equation. The results between them are almost identical with each other and it indicates that the accuracy of the LBM-coupled model is sufficiently high. Moreover, a macrosegregation simulation is carried out for a simple case where the macrosegregation emerges only by natural convection, by means of the LBM-coupled and conventional models. The LBM-coupled model yields almost the same result with the one of NS-based model. Importantly, however, the simulation of LBM-coupled model is about five times faster than the one of NS-based model.