The practical importance of turbulence led the U.K. Royal Academy of Engineering to launch an Initiative on Turbulence, the most important outcome of which was the definition and agreement of the 1999 Newton Institute Research Programme on Turbulence. The main aim of the- month programme, held at the institute in Cambridge, was to bring together the mathematics and engineering communities involved in the turbulence area to address the many problems and to map out future strategy. As a part of the Research Programme, a Symposium on Direct and Large-Eddy Simulation was jointly organised with ERCOFfAC through their Large-Eddy Simulation Interest Group and took place in May 1999. Two previous ERCOFf AC Workshops had already taken place on these closely related varieties of turbulence simulation, at The University of Surrey in 1994 and at Universite Joseph Fourier, Grenoble in 1996. The Symposium at Cambridge was therefore the third in the ERCOFTAC series, enhanced by the presence of leading figures in the field from Europe and the USA who were resident at INI for that period of the Research Programme. Professors M. Germano, A. Leonard, J. Jimenez, R. Kerr and S. Sarkar gave the invited lectures, text versions of which will be found in this volume. As occurred at the previous two ERCOFT AC workshops, there were almost one hundred participants mostly from Europe but including some from Japan and the USA, including on this occasion resident scientists of the INI Research Programme.

It is a truism that turbulence is an unsolved problem, whether in scientific, engin eering or geophysical terms. It is strange that this remains largely the case even though we now know how to solve directly, with the help of sufficiently large and powerful computers, accurate approximations to the equations that govern tur bulent flows. The problem lies not with our numerical approximations but with the size of the computational task and the complexity of the solutions we gen erate, which match the complexity of real turbulence precisely in so far as the computations mimic the real flows. The fact that we can now solve some turbu lence in this limited sense is nevertheless an enormous step towards the goal of full understanding. Direct and large-eddy simulations are these numerical solutions of turbulence. They reproduce with remarkable fidelity the statistical, structural and dynamical properties of physical turbulent and transitional flows, though since the simula tions are necessarily time-dependent and three-dimensional they demand the most advanced computer resources at our disposal. The numerical techniques vary from accurate spectral methods and high-order finite differences to simple finite-volume algorithms derived on the principle of embedding fundamental conservation prop erties in the numerical operations. Genuine direct simulations resolve all the fluid motions fully, and require the highest practical accuracy in their numerical and temporal discretisation. Such simulations have the virtue of great fidelity when carried out carefully, and repre sent a most powerful tool for investigating the processes of transition to turbulence."

It is a truism that turbulence is an unsolved problem, whether in scientific, engin eering or geophysical terms. It is strange that this remains largely the case even though we now know how to solve directly, with the help of sufficiently large and powerful computers, accurate approximations to the equations that govern tur bulent flows. The problem lies not with our numerical approximations but with the size of the computational task and the complexity of the solutions we gen erate, which match the complexity of real turbulence precisely in so far as the computations mimic the real flows. The fact that we can now solve some turbu lence in this limited sense is nevertheless an enormous step towards the goal of full understanding. Direct and large-eddy simulations are these numerical solutions of turbulence. They reproduce with remarkable fidelity the statistical, structural and dynamical properties of physical turbulent and transitional flows, though since the simula tions are necessarily time-dependent and three-dimensional they demand the most advanced computer resources at our disposal. The numerical techniques vary from accurate spectral methods and high-order finite differences to simple finite-volume algorithms derived on the principle of embedding fundamental conservation prop erties in the numerical operations. Genuine direct simulations resolve all the fluid motions fully, and require the highest practical accuracy in their numerical and temporal discretisation. Such simulations have the virtue of great fidelity when carried out carefully, and repre sent a most powerful tool for investigating the processes of transition to turbulence.

Progress in the numerical simulation of turbulence has been rapid in the 1990s. New techniques both for the numerical approximation of the Navier-Stokes equations and for the subgrid-scale models used in large-eddy simulation have emerged and are being widely applied for both fundamental and applied engineering studies, along with novel ideas for the performance and use of simulation for compressible, chemically reacting and transitional flows. This collection of papers from the second ERCOFTAC Workshop on Direct and Large-Eddy Simulation, held in Grenoble in September 1996, presents the key research being undertaken in Europe and Japan on these topics. Describing in detail the ambitious use of DNS for fundamental studies and of LES for complex flows of potential and actual engineering importance, this volume will be of interest to all researchers active in the area.

The practical importance of turbulence led the U.K. Royal Academy of Engineering to launch an Initiative on Turbulence, the most important outcome of which was the definition and agreement of the 1999 Newton Institute Research Programme on Turbulence. The main aim of the- month programme, held at the institute in Cambridge, was to bring together the mathematics and engineering communities involved in the turbulence area to address the many problems and to map out future strategy. As a part of the Research Programme, a Symposium on Direct and Large-Eddy Simulation was jointly organised with ERCOFfAC through their Large-Eddy Simulation Interest Group and took place in May 1999. Two previous ERCOFf AC Workshops had already taken place on these closely related varieties of turbulence simulation, at The University of Surrey in 1994 and at Universite Joseph Fourier, Grenoble in 1996. The Symposium at Cambridge was therefore the third in the ERCOFTAC series, enhanced by the presence of leading figures in the field from Europe and the USA who were resident at INI for that period of the Research Programme. Professors M. Germano, A. Leonard, J. Jimenez, R. Kerr and S. Sarkar gave the invited lectures, text versions of which will be found in this volume. As occurred at the previous two ERCOFT AC workshops, there were almost one hundred participants mostly from Europe but including some from Japan and the USA, including on this occasion resident scientists of the INI Research Programme.