Develops a physical theory from the mass of experimental results, with revisions to reflect advances of recent years.

The Seventh Symposium was held on the campus of Stanford University with·a combination offacilities and weather which made it possible to add open-air poster sessions and coffee breaks to the programme. This was particularly convenient as the call for papers attracted close to three hundred abstracts and a total number of participants well in excess of this number. Some one hundred and thirty papers were presented in carefully phased parallel sessions and thirty six further contributions were made available in the form of posters. In addition, a lively open-forum session allowed additional speakers to make brief presentations. The staff of the Thermo-Sciences Division of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford undertook the local arrangements with evident success and their extensive record of contributions to Turbulent Shear Flows made the venue particularly appropriate. Also, the Centre for Turbulence Studies, based on the faculty of the University and the NASA Ames Research Center, provided a considerable body of expertise with emphasis on direct numerical stimulation.

The first four symposia in the series on turbulent shear flows have been held alternately in the United States and Europe with the first and third being held at universities in eastern and western States, respectively. Continuing this pattern, the Fifth Symposium on Turbulent Shear Flows was held at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, in August 1985. The meeting brought together more than 250 participants from around the world to present the results of new research on turbulent shear flows. It also provided a forum for lively discussions on the implications (practical or academic) of some of the papers. Nearly 100 formal papers and about 20 shorter communications in open forums were presented. In all the areas covered, the meeting helped to underline the vitality of current research into turbulent shear flows whether in experimental, theoretical or numerical studies. The present volume contains 25 of the original symposium presentations. All have been further reviewed and edited and several have been considerably extended since their first presentation. The editors believe that the selection provides papers of archival value that, at the same time, give a representative statement of current research in the four areas covered by this book: - Homogeneous and Simple Flows - Free Flows - Wall Flows - Reacting Flows Each of these sections begins with an introductory article by a distinguished worker in the field.

Since the inaugural symposium at the Pennsylvania State University in 1977, the venues for the series of biennial symposia on turbulent shear flows have alternated between the USA and Europe. For the Sixth Symposium, the first to be held in France, the city of Toulouse proved a natura] choice, being a centre for the aerospace industry, meteorological research and higher education. The meeting was hosted by the Paul Sabatier University on the southern perimeter of the city, and there nearly 300 workers in the field of turbulence converged to pronounce upon, debate and absorb the current issues in turbulent shear flows and to enjoy the unfailing September sunshine. The meeting had attracted more than 200 offers of papers from which just over 100 full papers and about 20 shorter communications in open forums could be accommodated. The present volume contains 28 of the original symposium presentations selected by the editors. Each contribution has been revised by its authors - sometimes quite extensively -in the light of the oral presentation. It is our hope that the selection provides a substantial statement of permanent interest on current research in the five areas covered by this book, i.e. fundamentals and closures, scalar transport and geophysical flows, aerodynamic flows, complex flows, and numerical simulations.

In spite of intensive efforts over many decades, the problem of turbulence remains as challenging as ever and the number of papers, books and conferences on this topic con tinues to grow. As experimental techniques and computing power have developed, the breadth of investigations into the structure and development of turbulent flows has in creased to encompass many diverse fields of application in engineering, physics, biolo gy and so on. As a consequence, it is now very difficult for a single research worker to keep in touch with the many developments that are taking place in turbulence. One of the few opportunities for obtaining some overall view of the subject arises from large international symposia on turbulence and, although they have some drawbacks, it is this opportunity that is one of their main merits. The International Symposium on Turbulent Shear Flows has now been held on three occasions and they seem to be established as a major opportunity for papers on a very diverse range of topics to be presented at a single meeting. This volume is a collec tion of papers from the third symposium that was held at the University of California, Davis from 9-11 September 1981. The papers are divided into four sections entitled Wall Flows, Scalar Transport, Recirculating Flows and Fundamentals. This collection represents about a third of the total number of papers presented.