AIAA JOURNAL Vol. 51, No.

1, 2013

Book Review
BOOK REVIEWS published in this section reflect the opinions of their individual authors. They are not necessarily the opinions of the Editors of this journal or of AIAA.

Lattice Boltzmann Method: Fundamentals and Engineering Applications with Computer Codes
A. A. Mohammed, Springer, New York, 2011, LVIII, 238 pp., $129
DOI: 10.2514/1.J051744

Over the last decade, the field of the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) has experienced explosive growth. From its beginnings in lattice gas automata, LBM has come a long way to becoming a legitimate alternative to NavierStokesbased computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. The rapid growth has lead to a big chasm between experts and novices in the field, and many textbooks and monographs are needed to fill the void. The title of this book suggests a treatment that starts from the LBM fundamentals to develop the concepts and techniques required for engineering applications. The book is very concise (108 pages) and provides about 70 additional pages of elementary computer codes. In the preface, the author defines the purpose of this book as written for engineers and scientists willing to apply LBM. In the first chapter, a very brief introduction to the kinetic theory of gases is provided. The author goes from descriptions of atoms and single-particle momentum equations to the Maxwellian equilibrium distribution in about 10 pages. Admittedly, a detailed introduction falls outside the scope of this book, but references to more meaningful treatments would have helped interested readers. In Chapter 2, the Boltzmann equation and the BhatnagarGrossKrook (BGK) approximation are introduced in quick succession. Discussion of the full collision operator is completely absent. Computing BoltzmannBGK on a lattice is the next topic of discussion. Although exceedingly brief, some of the intuitive explanations are quite appealing. Some coverage of the BogoliubovBorn GreenKirkwoodYvon hierarchy and the H-theorem would have made the treatment more complete. Another key missing aspect is the discussion of the preservation of invariances and isotropies on lattices. Indeed, what makes LBM mathematically permissible is that it preserves many of the fundamental properties of the continuum equations. Chapters 1 and 2 (24 pages) constitute the fundamentals portion of the book. The applications are covered in Chapters 3 to 7 (75 pages). These four chapters represent the best contribution of the book. Techniques and recipes employing LBM to solve for 1) the diffusion equation, 2) the advection-diffusion equation, and 3) incompressible flow equations are presented. Readers well-versed with
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conventional CFD will find the use of the Chapman Enskog analysis to demonstrate the consistency between LBM and continuum-based finite-difference schemes very reassuring. The treatment of boundary conditions is reasonable, but it is limited to linear boundaries. The examples solved include the usual canonical cases: channel flow, lid-driven cavity flow, and backward-facing step flow. Nonisothermal incompressible flow is the subject of Chapter 7. A brief discussion on mass and energy-equation coupling is given. Flow and heat transfer through porous media is a very interesting problem, and a very brief discussion (half-page) is given. The last five pages of the book are broken down into two chapters. Chapter 7 (four pages) is a hurried presentation of the important topic of the multirelaxation time (MRT) approach. The physical motivation behind the MRT approach is omitted, as are many of the critical details. Chapter 8, on complex flows, is less than one page long. (In comparison, the preface is two pages long.) Extension of the codes and recipes to complex problems is left up to the reader. The contents in Chapters 7 and 8 are more like topic outlines rather than contents of a chapter in a textbook. Scientists and engineers would have been better served if the following topics were included: 1) Why LBM? What are the advantages of LBM over NavierStokes-based CFD in terms of physics, numerics, and using computer architecture, especially parallelization? 2) Discuss motivation for MRT and provide an objective assessment of MRT vs SRT (single relaxation time) approaches. Specifically, discussions on spurious conserved quantities and damping of pressure waves are absolutely necessary. 3) Address difficulties at high-Mach numbers. 4) Discuss the use of non-uniform or unstructured grids. 5) Explain how to impose boundary conditions for complex geometry. 6) Describe the difficulties encountered in treating complex flows such as turbulence. Overall, the coverage of the subject matter in this book is much narrower than what is indicated in the title. The book appears to have been rushed into print before the manuscript was ready or complete. Many spelling and style

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BOOK REVIEW

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errors distract the reader. Although conciseness and timeliness are virtues in any book, incompleteness and glaring omissions are not. In its present form, the book lacks any depth and is more of a course manual for an undergraduate class. Practitioners looking for a perfunctory introduction to LBM before applying the method to simple problems may find the book useful. These readers would be better served if the LBM code was provided on a CD-ROM rather than in print. Most readers expecting

even elementary insight into the fundamentals of LBM will be less satisfied. Engineers and scientists interested in applying LBM to practical problems without getting too much into the theoretical details will have to look to other books and sources.

Sharath Girimaji Texas A&M University

Downloaded by Juan Salazar on October 12, 2013 | http://arc.aiaa.org | DOI: 10.2514/1.J051744