A novel and efficient algorithm is presented in this paper to deal with DNS of turbulent reacting flows under the low-Mach-number assumption, with detailed chemistry and a quasi-spectral accuracy. The temporal integration of the equations relies on an operating-split strategy, where chemical reactions are solved implicitly with a stiff solver and the convection-diffusion operators are solved with a Runge-Kutta-Chebyshev method. The spatial discretisation is performed with high-order compact schemes, and a FFT based constant-coefficient spectral solver is employed to solve a variable-coefficient Poisson equation. The numerical implementation takes advantage of the 2DECOMP&FFT libraries developed by [1], which are based on a pencil decomposition method of the domain and are proven to be computationally very efficient. An enhanced pressure-correction method is proposed to speed up the achievement of machine precision accuracy. It is demonstrated that a second-order accuracy is reached in time, while the spatial accuracy ranges from fourth-order to sixth-order depending on the set of imposed boundary conditions. The software developed to implement the present algorithm is called HOLOMAC, and its numerical efficiency opens the way to deal with DNS of reacting flows to understand complex turbulent and chemical phenomena in flames.

Solution methods for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations based on finite volume discretizations often implement boundary conditions using ghost cells outside of the computational domain. Filling the ghost cells using straightforward zeroth-or first-order extrapolation, although computationally expedient, is well known to fail even for some simple flows, especially when turbulent structures interact with the boundaries or if time-varying inflow conditions are imposed. The Navier-Stokes characteristic boundary condition approach provides more accurate boundary conditions, but requires the use of special discretizations at boundaries. The present paper develops a new technique based on the Navier-Stokes characteristic boundary condition approach to derive values for ghost cells that significantly improve the treatment of boundaries over simple extrapolation, but retain the ghost cell approach. It is demonstrated in the context of a Godunov integration procedure that the new method provides accurate results, while allowing the use of the same stencil and numerical methodology near the boundaries as in the interior.