Fluid–Structure Interaction Simulation of a Coriolis Mass Flowmeter Using a Lattice Boltzmann Method

Abstract

In this paper, we use a fluid–structure interaction (FSI) approach to simulate a Coriolis mass flowmeter (CMF). The fluid dynamics is calculated by the open-source framework OpenLB, based on the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). For the structural dynamics we employ the open-source software Elmer, an implementation of the finite element method (FEM). A staggered coupling approach between the two software packages is presented. The finite element mesh is created by the mesh generator Gmsh to ensure a complete open source workflow. The Eigenmodes of the CMF, which are calculated by modal analysis, are compared with measurement data. Using the estimated excitation frequency, a fully coupled, partitioned, FSI simulation is applied to simulate the phase shift of the investigated CMF design. The calculated phase shift values are in good agreement to the measurement data and verify the suitability of the model to numerically describe the working principle of a CMF.

Comprehensive Computational Model for Coupled Fluid Flow, Mass Transfer, and Light Supply in Tubular Photobioreactors Equipped with Glass Sponges

“…In previous works by Mink et al [16][17][18], the light transport simulation based on the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) was extended, validated, and applied to efficiently predict light distribution in PBR. As an alternative approximation technique in CFD, an LBM simulation has a particular strength in multiphysics applications [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34], and is a suitable framework for the development of a computational model for algae trajectories (Lagrange-Lagrange) and mass transfer (Euler-Lagrange). In addition, LBM brings forth almost perfect parallelizability, which allows highly scalable simulations on high-performance computing machinery.…”

Binary fluid flow simulations with free energy lattice Boltzmann methods

“…Exemplarily for the latter, the highly parallel C++ framework OpenLB [18] has been successfully used for simulations of various transport processes also on Top500 HPC machines (e.g. [18,10,30,26,7,36,32,9,35,31,33,4]). Simulating multiphase and multicomponent flows in LBM is mostly based on phase field models with diffuse interfaces.…”

Limit Consistency of Lattice Boltzmann Equations

“…Primarily out of this reason, meanwhile the LBM has become an established alternative to conventional approximation tools for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations (NSE) [25] where optimized scalability to high performance computers (HPC) is crucial. As such, LBM has been used with various extensions for applicative scenarios [22,23,35,29,7,13], such as transient computer simulations of turbulent fluid flow with the help of assistive numerical diffusion [14,34] or large eddy simulation in space [37] and in time [36]. Nonetheless, the LBM's relaxation principle does come at the price of inducing a bottom-up method, which stands in contrast to conventional top-down discretization techniques such as finite difference methods.…”