Turbulence-radiation interaction in large eddy simulations of turbulent reactive flows: a review

Turbulence-radiation interaction (TRI) arises from the highly non-linear coupling between fluctuations of radiative intensity and fluctuations of temperature and chemical composition of the medium. It is well recognized that neglecting turbulent fluctuations of the latter scalars when computing the mean radiation field, as is standard in Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations, leads to mispredictions of the radiative heat fluxes and the radiant fraction in as much as one order of magnitude. Conversely, the importance of TRI in large eddy simulations (LES)—i.e., the effect of subfilter-scale (SFS) fluctuations on the filtered radiation field—has only started to be investigated in the last decade. The present text reviews the knowledge gathered so far on the subject. The instantaneous and the spatially filtered forms of the radiative transfer equation (RTE) are presented, and the unresolved correlations resulting from the filtering operation are discussed. Models for accounting for SFS-TRI are surveyed, with the most popular ones (namely, probability density function-based methods and empirical approximations) reviewed in detail. An appraisal of the literature on the importance and characteristics of SFS-TRI is performed, with special attention given to turbulent jet diffusion flames and pool fires, which are the two configurations for which SFS-TRI has been studied the most. The main findings of these studies are summarized, and recommendations are given on directions of future works on the subject.