Turbulence modelling of thermal plasma flows

This article presents a discussion of the ideas for modelling turbulent thermal plasma flows, reviewing the challenges, efforts, and state-of-the-art simulations. Demonstrative simulations are also performed to present the importance of numerical methods as well as physical models to express turbulent features. A large eddy simulation has been applied to turbulent thermal plasma flows to treat time-dependent and 3D motions of multi-scale eddies. Sub-grid scale models to be used should be able to express not only turbulent but also laminar states because both states co-exist in and around thermal plasmas which have large variations of density as well as transport properties under low Mach-number conditions. Suitable solution algorithms and differencing schemes must be chosen and combined appropriately to capture multi-scale eddies and steep gradients of temperature and chemical species, which are turbulent features of thermal plasma flows with locally variable Reynolds and Mach numbers. Several simulations using different methods under different conditions show commonly that high-temperature plasma regions exhibit less turbulent structures, with only large eddies, whereas low-temperature regions tend to be more turbulent, with numerous small eddies. These numerical results agree with both theoretical insight and photographs that show the characteristics of eddies. Results also show that a turbulence transition of a thermal plasma jet through a generation-breakup process of eddies in a torch is dominated by fluid dynamic instability after ejection rather than non-uniform or unsteady phenomena.