  In this paper, a central-moment-based lattice Boltzmann (CLB) method for
incompressible thermal flows is proposed. In the method, the incompressible
Navier-Stokes equations and the convection-diffusion equation for the
temperature field are sloved separately by two different CLB equations. Through
the Chapman-Enskog analysis, the macroscopic governing equations for
incompressible thermal flows can be reproduced. For the flow field, the tedious
implementation for CLB method is simplified by using the shift matrix with a
simplified central-moment set, and the consistent forcing scheme is adopted to
incorporate forcing effects. Compared with several D2Q5
multiple-relaxation-time (MRT) lattice Boltzmann methods for the temperature
equation, the proposed method is shown to be better Galilean invariant through
measuring the thermal diffusivities on a moving reference frame. Thus a higher
Mach number can be used for convection flows, which decreases the computational
load significantly. Numerical simulations for several typical problems confirm
the accuracy, efficiency, and stability of the present method. The grid
convergence tests indicate that the proposed CLB method for incompressible
thermal flows is of second-order accuracy in space.
