Simulation of Frost Formation on Cylinders Under Natural Convection Using Lattice Boltzmann Method

The formation of frost has substantial impacts on various industries such as aviation, refrigeration, and air conditioning. This process is highly intricate, involving transient heat and mass transfer. Recently, significant attention has been given to the periods of frost growth through physical, mathematical, and experimental approaches. The lattice Boltzmann method has recently gained recognition as an effective tool for simulating complex phenomena. Despite the widespread use of circular cylinders in the refrigeration industry under natural convection conditions, research on frost growth on these surfaces has been limited. Therefore, this study aims to explore the characteristics of frost growth on circular cylinders using the lattice Boltzmann method. The findings indicate that although the computational time for the lattice Boltzmann method is less than twice that of the finite volume method, its implementation is significantly simpler and requires less coding time. Also, in problems where the system has phase changes and mass transfer, in addition to simplification and less coding time, the computational time of the lattice Boltzmann method is also much less than that of the finite volume methods. In conventional Computational fluid dynamics approaches such as the finite-volume method, modeling phase-change phenomena typically requires additional closure relations, interface-tracking schemes, or empirical correlations, which introduce uncertainties and complexity. In contrast, the lattice Boltzmann method inherently captures microscale transport mechanisms without relying on such auxiliary models, resulting in a simpler formulation and more accurate prediction of frost evolution on the cylindrical surface. Finally, the results demonstrate that the relative error between experimental outcomes and the numerical model ranges from 5 to 20%, with the finite volume method exhibiting a similar order of error.