Conjugate heat and mass transfer in the lattice Boltzmann equation method

An interface treatment for conjugate heat and mass transfer in the lattice Boltzmann equation method is proposed based on our previously proposed second-order accurate Dirichlet and Neumann boundary schemes. The continuity of temperature (concentration) and its flux at the interface for heat (mass) transfer is intrinsically satisfied without iterative computations, and the interfacial temperature (concentration) and their fluxes are conveniently obtained from the microscopic distribution functions without finite-difference calculations. The present treatment takes into account the local geometry of the interface so that it can be directly applied to curved interface problems such as conjugate heat and mass transfer in porous media. For straight interfaces or curved interfaces with no tangential gradient, the coupling between the interfacial fluxes along the discrete lattice velocity directions is eliminated and thus the proposed interface schemes can be greatly simplified. Several numerical tests are conducted to verify the applicability and accuracy of the proposed conjugate interface treatment, including (i) steady convection-diffusion in a channel containing two different fluids, (ii) unsteady convection-diffusion in the channel, (iii) steady heat conduction inside a circular domain with two different solid materials, and (iv) unsteady mass transfer from a spherical droplet in an extensional creeping flow. The accuracy and order of convergence of the simulated interior temperature (concentration) field, the interfacial temperature (concentration), and heat (mass) flux are examined in detail and compared with those obtained from the "half-lattice division" treatment in the literature. The present analysis and numerical results show that the half-lattice division scheme is second-order accurate only when the interface is fixed at the center of the lattice links, while the present treatment preserves second-order accuracy for arbitrary link fractions. For curved interfaces, the present treatment yields second-order accurate interior and interfacial temperatures (concentrations) and first-order accurate interfacial heat (mass) flux. An increase of order of convergence by one degree is obtained for each of these three quantities compared with the half-lattice division scheme. The surface-averaged Sherwood numbers computed in test (iv) agree well with published results.