Higher-Order Moments and covariance

In the same fashion as single-variable distributions, higher-order moments can be con-siderd. The one of most interest is the second-order moment 

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As discussed in Chapter 5, the complexity of the chemical source term restricts the applicability of closures based on second- and higher-order moments of the scalars. Nevertheless, it is instructive to derive the scalar covariance equation for two scalars molecular-diffusion coefficients ra and I, respectively. Starting from (1.28), p. 16, the transport equation for ((,) can be found following the same steps that were used for the Reynolds stresses. This process yields34... 

The failure of first-order moment closures for the treatment of mixing-sensitive reactions has led to the exploration of higher-order moment closures (Dutta and Tarbell 1989 Heeb and Brodkey 1990 Shenoy and Toor 1990). The simplest closures in this category attempt to relate the covariances of reactive scalars to the variance of the mixture fraction (I 2). The latter can be found by solving the inert-scalar-variance transport equation ((3.105), p. 85) along with the transport equation for (f). For example, for the one-step reaction in (5.54) the unknown scalar covariance can be approximated by... 

The first-order second moment method (FOSM) is the method adopted within the framework to propagate input parameter uncertainty through numerical models (26, 27). FOSM provides two moments, mean and variance of predicted variables. This method is based on Taylor series expansion, of which second-order and higher terms are truncated. The expected value of concentration, E[u] and its covariance, COV[u] are (25, 27),... 

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