We study the dynamics and properties of a turbulent flame, formed in the presence of subsonic, high-speed, homogeneous, isotropic Kolmogorov-type turbulence in an unconfined system. Direct numerical simulations are performed with Athena-RFX, a massively parallel, fully compressible, high-order, dimensionally unsplit, reactive-flow code. A simplified reaction-diffusion model represents a stoichiometric H 2 -air mixture. The system being modeled represents turbulent combustion with the Damköhler number Da = 0.05 and with the turbulent velocity at the energy injection scale 30 times larger than the laminar flame speed. The simulations show that flame interaction with high-speed turbulence forms a steadily propagating turbulent flame with a flame brush width approximately twice the energy injection scale and a speed four times the laminar flame speed. A method for reconstructing the internal flame structure is described and used to show that the turbulent flame consists of tightly folded flamelets. The reaction zone structure of these is virtually identical to that of the planar laminar flame, while the preheat zone is broadened by approximately a factor of two. Consequently, the system evolution represents turbulent combustion in the thin-reaction zone regime. The turbulent cascade fails to penetrate the internal flame structure, and thus the action of small-scale turbulence is suppressed throughout most of the flame. Finally, our results suggest that for stoichiometric H 2 -air mixtures, any substantial flame broadening by the action of turbulence cannot be expected in all subsonic regimes.

The interactions between turbulence and flames in premixed reacting flows are studied for a broad range of turbulence intensities by analyzing scalar (reactant mass-fraction) gradient, vorticity, and strain rate fields. The analysis is based on fully compressible, three-dimensional numerical simulations of H 2-air combustion in an unconfined domain. For low turbulence intensities, a flame reconstruction method based on the scalar gradient shows that the internal flame structure is similar to that of a laminar flame, while the magnitudes of the vorticity and strain rate are suppressed by heat release and there is substantial anisotropy in the orientation of intense vortical structures. As the turbulence intensity increases, the local flame orientation becomes increasingly isotropic, and the flame preheat zone is substantially broadened. There is, however, relatively little broadening of the reaction zone, even for high intensities. At high turbulence intensities, the vorticity and strain rate are only weakly affected by the flame, and their interactions with the scalar gradient are similar to those found in nonreacting turbulence. A decomposition of the total strain rate into components due to turbulence and the flame shows that vorticity suppression depends on the relative alignment between vorticity and the flame surface normal. This effect is used to explain the anisotropy of intense vortices at low intensities. The decomposition also reveals the separate effects of turbulent and dilatational straining on the flame width. V

Many astrophysical flows occur in inhomogeneous (clumpy) media. We present results of a numerical study of steady, planar shocks interacting with a system of embedded cylindrical clouds. Our study uses a two-dimensional geometry. Our numerical code uses an adaptive mesh refinement, allowing us to achieve sufficiently high resolution both at the largest and the smallest scales. We neglect any radiative losses, heat conduction, and gravitational forces. Detailed analysis of the simulations shows that interaction of embedded inhomogeneities with the shock/postshock wind depends primarily on the thickness of the cloud layer and arrangement of the clouds in the layer. The total cloud mass and the total number of individual clouds is not a significant factor. We define two classes of cloud distributions: thin and thick layers. We define the critical cloud separation along the direction of the flow and perpendicular to it, distinguishing between the interacting and noninteracting regimes of cloud evolution. Finally, we discuss mass loading and mixing in such systems.