Edward E. O'Brien Contributions To Reactive-Flow Turbulence

Professor Edward Ephraim O'Brien ("Ted") has made lasting contributions to the theory and modeling of scalar mixing and reaction in turbulent flows. With a doctoral dissertation at The Johns Hopkins University in 1960, entitled "On the Statistical Behavior of a Dilute Reactant in Isotropic Turbulence," supervised by the legend Stanley Corrsin, and in the company of notable pioneer of turbulence, John Leask Lumley, Ted's academic training propelled him through a prolific career. In the opening article of this Special Issue, we provide a review of some of Ted's contributions. First, a summary is presented of his work on the examination of the failure of the cumulant discard approximation for the scalar mixing. This is followed by a highlight of his impacts on other spectral theories of turbulence including Kraichnan's direct interaction approximation. His contributions to more modern theoretical/computational description of reactive turbulence are discussed next, including the transported probability density function (pdf) formulation, scalar-gradient pdf transport equation, scalar interfaces, and the filtered density function. Finally, some of his research on Direct Numerical Simulation of compressible turbulence is reviewed. Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.