Galilean invariant lattice Boltzmann scheme for natural convection on square and rectangular lattices

In this paper we present lattice Boltzmann (LB) schemes for convection diffusion coupled to fluid flow on two-dimensional rectangular lattices. Via inverse Chapman-Enskog analysis of LB schemes including source terms, we show that for consistency with physics it is required that the moments of the equilibrium distributions equal those of the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution. These constraints can be satisfied for the rectangular D2Q9 lattice for only fluid flow in the weakly compressible regime. The analysis of source terms shows that fluxes are really defined on the boundaries of the Wigner-Seitz cells, and not on the lattice sites where the densities are defined-which is quite similar to the staggered grid finite-volume schemes. Our theoretical findings are confirmed by numerical solutions of benchmark problems for convection diffusion and natural convection. The lattice Boltzmann scheme shows remarkably good performance for convection diffusion, showing little to non-numerical diffusion or numerical dispersion, even at high grid Peclet numbers.