Improved phase-field-based lattice Boltzmann method for thermocapillary flow

In this paper, we present an improved phase-field-based lattice Boltzmann (LB) method for thermocapillary flows with large density, viscosity, and thermal conductivity ratios. The present method uses three LB models to solve the conservative Allen-Cahn equation, the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, and the temperature equation. To overcome the difficulty caused by the convection term in solving the convection-diffusion equation for the temperature field, we first rewrite the temperature equation as a diffuse equation where the convection term is regarded as the source term and then construct an improved LB model for the diffusion equation. The macroscopic governing equations can be recovered correctly from the present LB method; moreover, the present LB method is much simpler and more efficient. In order to test the accuracy of this LB method, several numerical examples are considered, including the planar thermal Poiseuille flow of two immiscible fluids, the two-phase thermocapillary flow in a nonuniformly heated channel, and the thermocapillary Marangoni flow of a deformable bubble. It is found that the numerical results obtained from the present LB method are consistent with the theoretical prediction and available numerical data, which indicates that the present LB method is an effective approach for the thermocapillary flows.