Hybrid thermal link-wise artificial compressibility method

•A new method is presented for thermal flow prediction.•The method is accurate and easily scalable.•The method is an interesting alternative to NS solvers.

Thermal flow prediction is a subject of interest from a scientific and engineering points of view. Our motivation is to develop an accurate, easy to implement and highly scalable method for convective flows simulation. To this end, we present an extension to the link-wise artificial compressibility method (LW-ACM) for thermal simulation of weakly compressible flows. The novel hybrid formulation uses second-order finite difference operators of the energy equation based on the same stencils as the LW-ACM. For validation purposes, the differentially heated cubic cavity was simulated. The simulations remained stable for Rayleigh numbers up to Ra=108Ra=108. The Nusselt numbers at isothermal walls and dynamics quantities are in good agreement with reference values from the literature. Our results show that the hybrid thermal LW-ACM is an effective and easy-to-use solution to solve convective flows.