LES of compressible inert and reacting turbulent shear flows

Compressible turbulent flows are an important element of highspeed flight. However, they are not completely understood. Especially interactions between compressible turbulence and combustion lead to challenging, yet unsolved problems. Large-eddy simulation (LES) represents a powerful tool which allows to mimic such flows in remarkable detail and to analyse underlying physical mechanisms, sometimes even those which cannot be accessed by experiment. The paper provides a short description of this tool and applications to complex turbulent flow through a supersonic nozzle and in a reacting mixing layer. The analysis focuses on effects of compressibility, acceleration and heat release on the transport characteristics of the stream-wise Reynolds stress component only, but emphasises the need to model these effects based on the full Reynolds stress equations.