Lattice Gas Cellular Automata
Sauro Succi · 2001
Abstract Digital arithmetic is to scientific computing as collisions of molecules are to fluid mechanics: crucial to the implementation, but irrelevant to most scientific questions . L. N. Trefehen, ‘Maxims about numerical mathematics, computer science and life’, SIAM News , Jan/Feb, 1998. In 1986, Uriel Frisch, Brosl Hasslacher and Yves Pomeau produced their wonderful bombshell: a simple cellular automaton obeying nothing but conservation laws at a microscopic level was able to reproduce the complexity of real fluid flows [18]. This discovery caused great excitement in the fluid dynamics community. The prospects were promising: a round-off free, intrinsically parallel computational paradigm for fluid flows, perhaps, even more, the analogue of the Ising model for turbulence! However, a few serious problems were quickly recognized and addressed with great intensity in the following years.