Turbulent combustion sits at the interface of two important nonlinear, multiscale phenomena: chemistry and turbulence. Its study is extremely timely in view of the need to develop new combustion technologies in order to address challenges associated with climate change, energy source uncertainty, and air pollution. Despite the fact that modeling of turbulent combustion is a subject that has been researched for a number of years, its complexity implies that key issues are still eluding, and a theoretical description that is accurate enough to make turbulent combustion models rigorous and quantitative for industrial use is still lacking. In this book, prominent experts review most of the available approaches in modeling turbulent combustion, with particular focus on the exploding increase in computational resources that has allowed the simulation of increasingly detailed phenomena. The relevant algorithms are presented, the theoretical methods are explained, and various application examples are given. The book is intended for a relatively broad audience, including seasoned researchers and graduate students in engineering, applied mathematics and computational science, engine designers and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) practitioners, scientists at funding agencies, and anyone wishing to understand the state-of-the-art and the future directions of this scientifically challenging and practically important field.

This thesis describes the application of the first-order Conditional Moment Closure (CMC) to the autoignition of high-pressure fuel jets, and to piloted and lifted turbulent jet flames using classical and advanced CMC submodels. A Doubly-Conditional Moment Closure (DCMC) formulation is further proposed.

The combustion of fossil fuels remains a key technology for the foreseeable future. It is therefore important that we understand the mechanisms of combustion and, in particular, the role of turbulence within this process. Combustion always takes place within a turbulent flow field for two reasons: turbulence increases the mixing process and enhances combustion, but at the same time combustion releases heat which generates flow instability through buoyancy, thus enhancing the transition to turbulence. The four chapters of this book present a thorough introduction to the field of turbulent combustion. After an overview of modeling approaches, the three remaining chapters consider the three distinct cases of premixed, non-premixed, and partially premixed combustion, respectively. This book will be of value to researchers and students of engineering and applied mathematics by demonstrating the current theories of turbulent combustion within a unified presentation of the field.

Conditional Source-term Estimation (CSE) is a closure technique for modelling turbulent combustion phenomena. CSE uses the Conditional Moment Closure (CMC) hypothesis for closing chemical source terms: conditionally averaged chemical source terms are closed by conditional averaged scalars, which are obtained by inverting an integral equation, instead of solving transport equations (as in CMC). Since CSE has been successfully applied to both premixed and non-premixed configurations, it represents an attractive method for dealing with the more general and complex case of partially premixed combustion. The objectives of the present study are to (i) consolidate the premixed formulation of CSE through numerical simulations of a turbulent bluff body premixed flame; (ii) formulate, implement and test the Doubly conditional CSE (DCSE) in the context of partially premixed combustion; (iii) compare the DCSE predictions with well documented turbulent partially premixed flames. The canonical example of partially premixed flames is represented by turbulent lifted flames. A series of lifted turbulent jet flames is investigated in RANS by using DCSE. The DCSE calculations are successful in predicting the lift-off heights at three different conditions and reproducing many aspects of the flame structure in agreement with the experimental observations. The current results show that important aspects of the stabilization mechanism can be reproduced by the DCSE combustion model. The applicability of DCSE is further evaluated by applying this approach to a series of turbulent V-shaped flames for which experimental data is available. Premixed and stratified conditions are investigated. Overall, the agreement between numerical results and experimental findings is good, demonstrating the capability of DCSE to deal with partially premixed combustion. Future work includes implementation of CSE in LES and investigation of different fuels such as propane and biofuels.

This book presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art models for turbulent combustion, with special emphasis on the theory, development and applications of combustion models in practical combustion systems. It simplifies the complex multi-scale and nonlinear interaction between chemistry and turbulence to allow a broader audience to understand the modeling and numerical simulations of turbulent combustion, which remains at the forefront of research due to its industrial relevance. Further, the book provides a holistic view by covering a diverse range of basic and advanced topics—from the fundamentals of turbulence–chemistry interactions, role of high-performance computing in combustion simulations, and optimization and reduction techniques for chemical kinetics, to state-of-the-art modeling strategies for turbulent premixed and nonpremixed combustion and their applications in engineering contexts.