Computational investigation of total-enthalpy based conjugate heat transfer in particle-laden flows using lattice Boltzmann method

Ayyala Somayajula RK, Köstler H, Jonnalagadda A (2026)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2026

Journal

International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer Elsevier

Book Volume: 271

Article Number: 129308

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2026.129308

Abstract

This work presents a comprehensive computational investigation of a smoothed profile-lattice Boltzmann method for particle-laden conjugate heat transfer (CHT) using a volume-of-body (VoB)-based virtual fluid formulation. The method is enhanced with a two-relaxation-time (TRT) collision operator, and a detailed Chapman–Enskog expansion is derived to establish the connection between the lattice dynamics and the macroscopic thermal energy equation. The resultant CHT model, implemented in the opensource waLBerla high-performance software framework, is rigorously validated against a suite of three-dimensional benchmark problems across a range of Prandtl numbers, including sedimentation of a cold particle in a thermally stratified fluid, catalyst-particle heating in a vertical channel, and effective thermal diffusivity in particle-laden Couette flow. These studies demonstrate excellent agreement with established numerical and empirical results, while also highlighting the enhanced numerical stability of the TRT formulation compared to its single-relaxation-time (SRT) counterpart, particularly for high specific-heat ratios. The scalability of the implementation is assessed through extensive weak and strong scaling analyses performed on up to 512 compute nodes of both CPU (LUMI-C) and GPU (LUMI-G) partitions of the LUMI EuroHPC system. The results show that the model scales efficiently on both architectures, with GPUs delivering significantly reduced time-to-solution, while CPUs exhibit higher parallel efficiency due to their computation-dominated runtime. These findings demonstrate that our implementation approach enables large-scale, fully resolved CHT simulations of particle-laden flows involving millions of particles, which is essential to study complex local phenomena occurring in several natural and industrial settings.

Authors with CRIS profile

Ravi Kiran Ayyala Somayajula Lehrstuhl für Informatik 10 (Wissenschaftliches Rechnen) (LSS) Harald Köstler Lehrstuhl für Informatik 10 (Wissenschaftliches Rechnen) (LSS)

Involved external institutions

Italian Institute of Technology / Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) IT Italy (IT)

How to cite

APA:

Ayyala Somayajula, R.K., Köstler, H., & Jonnalagadda, A. (2026). Computational investigation of total-enthalpy based conjugate heat transfer in particle-laden flows using lattice Boltzmann method. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2026.129308

MLA:

Ayyala Somayajula, Ravi Kiran, Harald Köstler, and Anirudh Jonnalagadda. "Computational investigation of total-enthalpy based conjugate heat transfer in particle-laden flows using lattice Boltzmann method." International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 271 (2026).

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