ITR: Scalable Portable Algorithms for Thermal Radiation/Turbulence/Chemistry Interactions

In many important combustion applications, heat transfer is dominated by thermal radiation from combustion gases and soot. Thermal radiation from combustion gases, even in the absence of turbulence interactions, is extremely complicated; accurate and efficient predictions are only now becoming possible. The coupling between turbulence and radiation has to date essentially been ignored due to their extreme complexity, although preliminary calculations have shown that turbulence-radiation interactions (TRI) can more than double the radiative loss from a flame. Integration of finite volume and finite element methods, stochastic methods based on a probability density function (PDF), and ray tracing Monte Carlo schemes, exploiting the strengths of each method, can potentially produce a formidable computational tool to describe the highly nonlinear interaction between turbulence, chemical reactions and thermal radiation in turbulent flames over a broad range of conditions. An interdisciplinary team of Co-PI's, together with collaborators from industry and national laboratories, will address these issues using an innovative IT-based approach. The goal of this study is to develop modular, portable, scalable, parallel computational tools that address the interactions of all three phenomena.