Wind Tunnel — Lattice Boltzmann Fluid Dynamics

0 Vorticity 1

What You're Seeing

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Vortex Street

About This Obstacle

Visualization Mode

How It Works

The Reynolds number Re = UL/ν controls whether flow is smooth or chaotic. Low Re: viscosity dominates (laminar). High Re: inertia dominates (turbulent).

Under the hood, this uses the Lattice Boltzmann Method — instead of solving fluid equations directly, it simulates particles streaming and colliding on a grid. Each cell tracks 9 velocity directions. At every step: stream (shift to neighbors), collide (relax toward equilibrium), bounce-back (reflect off walls).

References

Von Kármán, "Über den Mechanismus des Widerstandes" (1911) — vortex street theory
Bhatnagar, Gross & Krook (1954) — BGK collision operator
McNamara & Zanetti (1988) — Lattice Boltzmann Method
Qian et al. (1992) — D2Q9 lattice model
Roshko, NACA Report 1191 (1954) — Strouhal number for vortex shedding
Kolmogorov (1941) — turbulent energy cascade

Further reading:

Succi, The Lattice Boltzmann Equation (Oxford, 2001)
Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos (2015) Ch. 10
Schroeder, physics.weber.edu/schroeder/fluids