Large-eddy simulation of turbulent reacting flows

In this paper, a few advances and challenges towards predictive large-eddy simulations of turbulent reacting flow are discussed in the context of numerical simulations of aircraft engines, which require an adequate description of liquid fuel injection, liquid fuel atomization, drop breakup, drop dynamics, and evaporation, large-scale turbulent fuel air mixing, small scale molecular fuel air mixing, chemical reactions, and turbulence/chemistry interactions. We have identified three of the most important and most challenging modeling problems in this process, namely primary atomization, sub-filter scalar mixing, and pollutant formation. Some recent progress on all three topics is presented.