Summary This paper presents a numerical method for simulating turbulent flows via coupling the Boltzmann BGK equation with Spalart–Allmaras one equation turbulence model. Both the Boltzmann BGK equation and the turbulence model equation are carried out using the finite volume method on unstructured meshes, which is different from previous works on structured grid. The application of the gas‐kinetic scheme is extended to the simulation of turbulent flows with arbitrary geometries. The adaptive mesh refinement technique is also adopted to reduce the computational cost and improve the efficiency of meshes. To organize the unstructured mesh data structure efficiently, a non‐manifold hybrid mesh data structure is extended for polygonal cells. Numerical experiments are performed on incompressible flow over a smooth flat plate and compressible turbulent flows around a NACA 0012 airfoil using unstructured hybrid meshes. These numerical results are found to be in good agreement with experimental data and/or other numerical solutions, demonstrating the applicability of the proposed method to simulate both subsonic and transonic turbulent flows. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper presents an implicit method for the discrete unified gas-kinetic scheme (DUGKS) to speed up the simulations of the steady flows in all flow regimes. The DUGKS is a multi-scale scheme finite volume method (FVM) for all flow regimes because of its ability in recovering the Navier-Stokes solution in the continuum regime and the free transport mechanism in rarefied flow, which couples particle transport and collision in the flux evaluation at cell interfaces. In this paper the predicted iterations are constructed to update the macroscopic variables and the gas distribution functions in discrete microscopic velocity space. The lower-upper symmetric Gauss-Seidel (LU-SGS) factorization is applied to solve the implicit equations. The fast convergence of implicit discrete unified gas-kinetic scheme (IDUGKS) can be achieved through the adoption of a numerical time step with large CFL number. Some numerical test cases, including the Couette flow, the lid-driven cavity flows under different Knudsen number and the hypersonic flow in transition flow regime around a circular cylinder, have been performed to validate this proposed IDUGKS.The computational efficiency of the IDUGKS to simulate the steady flows in all flow regimes can be improved by one or two orders of magnitude in comparison with the explicit DUGKS.

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In this paper, the simplified discrete unified gas-kinetic scheme presented in the former paper is extended from incompressible flow to compressible flow at a high Mach number. In our earlier work, a simplified discrete unified gas–kinetic scheme was developed for low-speed flow in which the Mach number is small for keeping the incompressible property. To simulate compressible flow, the governing equation of the internal energy distribution function presented as potential energy including the Prandtl number effect is introduced to the present method. The velocity field is coupled with density and internal energy by the evolution of distribution functions related to mass, momentum, and temperature. For simplification and computational efficiency, the D2Q13 circular distribution function is applied as the equilibrium model. Compared to our earlier work, higher Mach number flows can be simulated by the proposed method, which is of the ability to simulate compressible flow. A number of numerical test cases from incompressible to compressible flows have been conducted, including incompressible lid-driven cavity flow, Taylor vortex flow, transonic flow past NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) 0012 airfoil, Sod shock tube, supersonic flow past a circular cylinder, and isentropic vortex convection. All simulation results agree well with the reference data.

The discrete unified gas kinetic scheme (DUGKS) is a new finite volume (FV) scheme for continuum and rarefied flows, which combines the benefits of both the lattice Boltzmann method and UGKS. By the reconstruction of the gas distribution function using particle velocity characteristic lines, the flux contains more detailed information of fluid flow and more concrete physical nature. In this work, a simplified DUGKS is proposed with the reconstruction stage on a whole time step instead of a half time step in the original DUGKS. Using the temporal/spatial integral Boltzmann Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook equation, the auxiliary distribution function with the inclusion of the collision effect is adopted. The macroscopic and mesoscopic fluxes of the cell on the next time step are predicted by the reconstruction of the auxiliary distribution function at interfaces along particle velocity characteristic lines. According to the conservation law, the macroscopic variables of the cell on the next time step can be updated through its flux, which is a moment of the predicted mesoscopic flux at cell interfaces. The equilibrium distribution function on the next time step can also be updated. The gas distribution function is updated by the FV scheme through its predicted mesoscopic flux in a time step. Compared with the original DUGKS, the computational process of the proposed method is more concise because of the omission of half time step flux calculation. The numerical time step is only limited by the Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy condition, and a relatively good stability has been preserved. Several test cases, including the Couette flow, lid-driven cavity flow, laminar flows over a flat plate, a circular cylinder, and an airfoil, and microcavity flow cases, are conducted to validate the present scheme. The observed numerical simulation results reasonably agree with the reported results.