Lattice-Boltzmann Solutions with Local Grid Refinement for Nasal Cavity Flows

To analyze rhinological complaints like a reduction of breathing capabilities, performance reduction of the olfactory organ, and complaints inherited by diminished heating and moisturizing functions of the human nasal cavity, flow simulations with a Lattice-Boltzmann method are carried out using refined Cartesian meshes to resolve, e.g., the wall-bounded shear layers. This method is particularly suited for flows in highly intricate geometries. By using hierarchical grid refinement the overall number of cells is reduced in order to improve the computational efficency. Before applying the algorithm to real human nasal geometries obtained from Computer Tomography (CT) it is validated by simulating the flow over a cylinder and over a sphere at low Reynolds numbers.