Conditional filtering method for large-eddy simulation of turbulent nonpremixed combustion

The conditional filtering method is proposed as a subfilter combustion model for large-eddy simulation LES of turbulent nonpremixed combustion. The novel method is based on conditional filtering of a reactive scalar field and an extension of conditional moment closure CMC for LES. Filtering conditioned on isosurfaces of the mixture fraction is adopted to resolve small-scale mixing and chemical reactions in nonpremixed combustion. The conditionally filtered equations are derived and the closure assumptions are discussed. A priori tests are performed using direct numerical simulation data for reacting mixing layers. The primary closure assumption on the subfilter flux in mixture fraction space is shown to work much better than the corresponding closure for the Reynolds averaged CMC due to resolved large-scale fluctuations of the scalar dissipation rate and of reactive scalars. Results show that first-order closure of the reaction rate performs well except for the boundaries of flame holes. In the boundaries of flame holes, fluctuations of reactive scalars around the conditionally filtered values are large enough for the effects of higher-order correlations to be significant. The accuracy of the first-order closure is less sensitive to the level of local extinction than that of first-order CMC, since large-scale fluctuations of reactive scalars on isosurfaces of the mixture fraction are resolved. This shows that extinction processes occur primarily over length scales comparable to the large scales of the turbulence. The integrated conditional filtering approach is introduced to reduce the computational cost and to resolve the low probability problem in the conditional filtering method. While the assumption of homogeneity in the integration direction is not as good as in the conditional average, the integrated formulation is shown to represent the extinction process caused by large-scale fluctuations of the scalar dissipation rate quite well. © 2005 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2084229