Lattice gas automaton

Lattice gas automata (LGA), or lattice gas cellular automata, are a type of cellular automaton used to simulate fluid flows. They were the precursor to the lattice Boltzmann methods. From lattice gas automata, it is possible to derive the macroscopic Navier-Stokes equations. Interest in lattice gas automaton methods levelled off in the early 1990s, as the interest in the lattice Boltzmann started to rise. Lattice gas automata (LGA), or lattice gas cellular automata, are a type of cellular automaton used to simulate fluid flows. They were the precursor to the lattice Boltzmann methods. From lattice gas automata, it is possible to derive the macroscopic Navier-Stokes equations. Interest in lattice gas automaton methods levelled off in the early 1990s, as the interest in the lattice Boltzmann started to rise. As a cellular automaton, these models comprise a lattice, where the sites on the lattice can take a certain number of different states. In lattice gas, the various states are particles with certain velocities. Evolution of the simulation is done in discrete time steps. After each time step, the state at a given site can be determined by the state of the site itself and neighboring sites, before the time step. The state at each site is purely boolean. At a given site, there either is or is not a particle moving in each direction. At each time step, two processes are carried out, propagation and collision.