Direct numerical simulation of turbulent flame kernels

A combustion DNS code has been developed to solve a fully compressible reacting flow and applied to studying the effects of a turbulent flame kernel. High accuracy numerical techniques have been employed which are 10th order explicit in space and a third order explicit Runge Kutta method in time. Parallel coding is achieved using the Message Passing Interface (MPI) and a performance test is presented showing efficiency and speed up factors. Turbulence is generated numerically for 64 independent simulations using the same laminar flame as an initial condition. Each initial turbulence field has been tested as a simulation of decaying isotropic turbulence without the inclusion of a flame. Initial results for the turbulent reacting simulations on a grid of 963 points are presented along with a laminar flame on a grid of 3843 points.