Study of Wind Movement Through the Cellular Automata and Lattice Boltzmann Approach

The computational simulation of wind dynamics is usually based on the numerical solution of partial differential equations and may not be adequate to describe additional phenomena such as erosion and sediment transport processes. Starting from this perspective the present work intends to show the potential use of cellular automata approach for modeling complex physical problems. In a first step the wind is modeled through the so-called Lattice Boltzmann technique, an extension of cellular automata, in which the fluid is described as a fictitious universe of particles moving and colliding on a lattice. The second step is the validation of the model through comparisons with the results of more traditional numerical solutions of atmosphere motion above coastal dunes. The situation of interest is that of a series of wind bursts crossing a dune of senoidal format with 6 m in height and 50 m in length. Wind speed profiles have been computed at different places along the dune. We observed that our simulations underestimate the flow speed close to the solid obstacle (the dune). This error was probably caused by the boundary conditions we used, or by a too coarse discretization of the spatial domain.