Week 1: Fascinating Fluids
March 18, 2023
Hi everyone, welcome to my first senior project blog post! I’ll be going over some background information and a brief project overview as well as introducing next steps for Week 2.
Background Information
Fluid dynamics is cool! The blooms of milk in your morning coffee, the way water swirls down the drain, and so much more are explained with fluid physics. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics where, with the help of computers, quantitative predictions of these phenomena are produced from fundamental physics equations. Perhaps the most well known methods in CFD involve solving discretized Navier-Stokes equations, a notoriously complicated set of partial differential equations that describe the motion of viscous fluids. However, the Lattice Boltzmann Method, derived from the Boltzmann Equation, takes a different approach. It describes fluids as a collection of mesoscopic particles whose size falls somewhere in between the range of microscopic and macroscopic, typically between 100 nm and 1000 nm. Fluid flow is modeled as the movement and collisions of these particles on a lattice grid.
Project Overview
My project will be centered around creating a Python implementation of the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM). I’ll start with reading about the theory behind LBM and progress to implementing the equations into code. I will test the accuracy of my Python simulation with benchmark cases in CFD like flow around a cylinder and Poiseuille flow. My senior project is conducted under the mentorship of Mrs. Swetha Bhattacharya (BISV) and Raj Bhattacharya (UCLA).
Next Steps: Week 2
Next week, I will continue working on my Python program and update you all on the progress and potential roadblocks. Thanks for reading, stay tuned
Sources
- Wagner, Alexander. A Practical Introduction To The Lattice Boltzmann Method. Www.Ndsu.Edu/Fileadmin/Physics.Ndsu.Edu/Wagner/LBbook.Pdf
- “Computational Fluid Dynamics.” Computational Fluid Dynamics – An Overview | ScienceDirect Topics, Https://Www.Sciencedirect.Com/Topics/Materials-Science/Computational-Fluid-Dynamics.