Lattice Boltzmann Method for Conduction and Radiation Heat Transfer in Composite Materials

In this work, the utilization of lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) in the simulation of coupled conduction and radiation heat transfer in composite materials is studied. The novel D3Q30-LBM and D3Q38-LBM models are proposed for the simulation of radiative transfer equation (RTE). The LBM-LBM model, coupled finite volume method (FVM) and LBM are compared with the coupled FVM and discrete ordinate method (DOM) for 2D and 3D simulations. The results show that the original D3Q26-LBM is insufficient for the simulation of radiation, and both the D3Q30-LBM and D3Q38-LBM are close to the DOM for the RTE. The LBM can have large errors in the simulation of heat conduction when the relaxation time is large. Thus, its application in the composite materials is limited when the ratio between thermal conductivities of different components is large. The models with LBM for RTE can be more efficient than the FVM-DOM for the simulation of conduction-radiation heat transfer in composite materials. The FVM-D3Q30-LBM model is suggested because of its accuracy and efficiency.