Stephen B. Pope

About

Stephen B. Pope is the Sibley College Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Cornell University, with a research focus on modeling and simulation of turbulent flows and turbulent combustion. He pioneered the use of probability density function (PDF) models for turbulent reactive flows and has contributed significantly to the statistical modeling of turbulent flows and their study via direct numerical simulations. His work in combustion chemistry includes developing dimension-reduction and tabulation methodologies. Dr. Pope received his undergraduate and graduate education in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College, London, and has held academic positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining Cornell in 1982. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of several prestigious organizations, including the Royal Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Physical Society. Dr. Pope has been recognized with numerous awards, such as the Zeldovich Gold Medal of the Combustion Institute and the Fluid Dynamics Prize of the American Physical Society. He is also known for his textbook 'Turbulent Flows,' published in 2000, and has made notable contributions to the understanding of turbulent combustion and reactive flows.

Research topics

• Mechanics
• Physics
• Statistical physics
• Mathematics
• Computer science

Selected publications

• Effects of finite spatial and temporal resolution in direct numerical simulations of incompressible isotropic turbulence

  Physical Review Fluids · 2018-06-18 · 96 citations

  articleSenior author

  A study combining spectral filtering and numerical simulations at enhanced spatial and/or temporal resolution is used to clarify the proper scaling of dissipation and enstrophy in forced incompressible isotropic turbulence.

  PublisherDOI

• Large eddy simulation/probability density function simulations of the Cambridge turbulent stratified flame series

  Combustion and Flame · 2018-10-24 · 48 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Effects of molecular transport in LES/PDF of piloted turbulent dimethyl ether/air jet flames

  Combustion and Flame · 2016-12-09 · 30 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Self-contained filtered density function

  Physical Review Fluids · 2017-09-18 · 29 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The filtered density function closure is extended to a ``self-contained'' format to include the subgrid scale statistics of all of the hydro-thermo-chemical variables in turbulent flows. The model is comprehensive and facilitates large eddy simulation of flows at low and high compressibility levels.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Tensor networks enable the calculation of turbulence probability distributions

  Science Advances · 2025-01-29 · 27 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Predicting the dynamics of turbulent fluids has been an elusive goal for centuries. Even with modern computers, anything beyond the simplest turbulent flows is too chaotic and multiscaled to be directly simulatable. An alternative is to treat turbulence probabilistically, viewing flow properties as random variables distributed according to joint probability density functions (PDFs). Such PDFs are neither chaotic nor multiscale, yet remain challenging to simulate due to their high dimensionality.…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: ITR: (ASE)-(sim+dmc): Algorithms for Large-Scale Simulations of Turbulent Combustion

  NSF · $1.4M · 2004–2009

• Collaborative Research: Lagrangian Statistics and Acceleration in Turbulent Shear Flows: Simulation and Modeling

  NSF · $244k · 2003–2006

Frequent coauthors

• Peyman Givi

  27 shared

• P. K. Yeung

  22 shared

• Zhuyin Ren

  20 shared

• Haifeng Wang

  19 shared

• Sarah Gimbel

  University of Washington

  18 shared

• Lauren Jensen

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  16 shared

• Ruth Hyewoo Shin

  University of Washington

  16 shared

• Abigail Mihaiuc

  Creative Commons

  16 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering

  Imperial College London

  1976

Awards & honors

• Propellants and Combustion Award, AIAA (2012)
• Hottel lecturer for the 34th International Combustion Sympos…
• Fluid Dynamics Prize, American Physical Society (2011)
• Zeldovich Gold Medal, Combustion Institute (2009)

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• Fengqi Youh-83
• Rebecca J. Barthelmieh-62
• Donald L. Kochh-61