Simulation of urban flows using a lattice Boltzmann model

A Lattice Boltzmann model (LBM) prototype was developed recently at Army Research Laboratory to simulate the complex flows in urban areas. The model can accommodate the complex mechanical and thermal forces of buildings and can utilize the processing power of many-core architectures (e.g., GPUs and MICs) to accelerate the computation. As an initial validation process, we used LBM to simulate several flows, such as Rayleigh-Bénard convection, thermally stratified flow and instability. Laboratory data and analytical solutions are compared with the simulation results, and the model was extended to simulate convective, atmospheric, boundary-layer flows in a real urban environment. Some preliminary results will be presented at this meeting.