  A novel approach for modeling the progress variable reaction rate in Large
Eddy Simulations of turbulent and reacting flows is proposed. This is done in
the context of two popular flamelet models which require the progress variable
variance as input. The approach is based on using a recently proposed
deconvolution method for modeling the variance. The deconvolution-modeled
variance, is used as an input in the flamelet models for modeling the filtered
progress variable rate. The assessment of the proposed approach is conducted a
priori using direct numerical simulation data of turbulent premixed flames. For
the conditions tested in this study, deconvolution does not introduce a
significant bias in the flamelet models' predictions, while a quantitatively
good prediction of the progress variable rate is obtained for both flamelet
models considered.
