Large eddy simulations of turbulent reacting flows in real burners: the status and challenges

Turbulence is a recurrent and recognised challenge for which the scientific community has not been able to provide reliable methodologies necessary for predictions in complex industrial applications. In fact and throughout the past century, that challenge has been identified as a million dollar achievement simply because of the tremendous impact such a contribution would have on existing industrial processes. Among all industries, the gas-turbine companies are probably the most receptive to new contributions in the field of turbulent reacting flows because of the upcoming new regulations and the existing pressure linked to petroleum consumption and pollutant emissions. From a purely scientific point of view, the treatment of combustion and turbulence yields additional difficulties. However, and because of the advent of high-performane computers providing teraflop capabilities, the fully unsteady, temporally and spatially dependent approach that is large eddy simulations (LES) provides new insights and promises when dealing with these industrial applications. In this document, state-of-the-art LES for complex flows is presented, along with developments and potential challenges that are needed to improve LES in order to yield an efficient and reliable tool for the prediction of real industrial turbulent reacting flows.