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A new opportunity to advance the modelling of turbulent heat transfer and chemical reaction.

A lecture by Brian Spalding

at

the Moscow Technical University School-Seminar on Heat Transfer

May 27, 1999

Summary

Since the publication of Kolmogorov's famous paper of 1942 (Izv.Akad.Nauk, VI.No 1-2. p56), all developers and users of turbulence models have relied on his brilliant guess, namely that:

Although it has been evident for many years that such quantities are NOT adequate for predicting many important phenomena (eg heat transfer influenced by buoyancy or any case of chemical reaction), the evidence has been largely disregarded.

Knowledge of the "probability-density functions" (PDFs) (or "population distributions") is what is truly needed; and these have been calculable only by means of the Monte Carlo method devised by Pope in 1982, which is both hard to understand and computationally expensive.

Recently, however, a new and economical means of computing the PDFs has been provided by the "multi-fluid model" (MFM) of turbulence, which is already capable of simulating realistically phenomena for which Kolmogorov-style turbulence models have failed.

The development provides new opportunities for young researchers to contribute, whether by way of:-

MFM hs already been shown to be capable of being represented by the PHOENICS Shareware program, which can be down-loaded from www.cham.co.uk. Therefore any would-be researcher with access to a personal computer can participate in the exploitation of the new possibility.

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