Lattice Boltzmann simulations of convection heat transfer in porous media

A non-orthogonal multiple-relaxation-time (MRT) lattice Boltzmann (LB) method is developed to study convection heat transfer in porous media at the representative elementary volume scale based on the generalized non-Darcy model. In the method, two different LB models are constructed: one is constructed in the framework of the double-distribution-function approach, and the other is constructed in the framework of the hybrid approach. In particular, the transformation matrices used in the MRT-LB models are non-orthogonal matrices. The present method is applied to study mixed convection flow in a porous channel and natural convection flow in a porous cavity. It is found that the numerical results are in good agreement with the analytical solutions and/or other results reported in previous studies. Furthermore, the non-orthogonal MRT-LB method shows better numerical stability in comparison with the BGK-LB method.