Lattice Boltzmann Method
The Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) is a computational fluid dynamics technique that simulates fluid flow by modeling particle distributions on a discrete lattice. It solves the Boltzmann equation numerically to capture complex phenomena like turbulence, multiphase flows, and heat transfer. LBM is known for its parallelizability and ability to handle complex geometries, making it popular in academic and industrial research.
Developers should learn LBM when working on simulations involving fluid dynamics, such as in aerospace, automotive, or biomedical engineering, where traditional Navier-Stokes solvers struggle with complex boundaries or multiphysics. It's particularly useful for GPU-accelerated computations due to its local nature, enabling high-performance simulations in areas like porous media flow or microfluidics.