[taliesinb]

Lattice Boltzmann have these same weaknesses (whether one cares as you say depends on the Reynolds regime). Point is, starting from the "simplest possible gas program" has yielded a useful branch of CFD, and one would have thought it extremely unlikely to work if you used intuition from traditional mathematics... It's as discrete and analytically intractable as you get.

Anyway, to me, the continued application of these methods is one data point that NKS-like methods are proving useful across a variety of domains.

[doop]

Err, no it doesn't - the viscosity in LB is a function purely of the relaxation time (for LBGK anyway). Nor do you need to do any simulation repeats to average out the noise. The main weakness of LB is that it's not as numerically stable as a lattice gas method.

[taliesinb]

Ooops -- just saw this! My mistake!