Prediction of swirling confined diffusion flame with a Monte Carlo and a presumed-PDF-model

This work aims to compare numerical results obtained by using the Monte Carlo composition-PDF method and a presumed-beta-PDF in order to reveal their effects on the prediction of flow and scalar fields in swirling confined methane diffusion flame. Using the intrinsic low dimensional manifolds method for modelling the chemistry and a second moment closure for the turbulence, it is shown that both PDF-methods provide a similar accuracy level of the prediction of mean quantities. While the presumed-beta-PDF performs using reasonable computational efforts, the Monte Carlo-PDF allows to capture well the turbulence-chemistry interaction and strong finite-chemistry effects such as local extinction. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.