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An original finite element scheme for advection‐diffusion‐reaction problems is presented. The new method, called spotted Petrov‐Galerkin (SPG), is a quadratic Petrov‐Galerkin (PG) formulation developed for the solution of equations where either reaction (associated to zero‐order derivatives of the unknown) and/or advection (proportional to first‐order derivatives) dominates on diffusion (associated to second‐order derivatives). The addressed issues are turbulence and advective‐reactive features in modelling turbomachinery flows.

The present work addresses the definition of a new PG stabilization scheme for the reactive flow limit, formulated on a quadratic finite element space of approximation. We advocate the use of a higher order stabilized formulation that guarantees the best compromise between solution stability and accuracy. The formulation is first presented for linear scalar one‐dimensional advective‐diffusive‐reactive problems and then extended to quadrangular Q2 elements.

The proposed advective‐diffusive‐reactive PG formulation improves the solution accuracy with respect to a standard streamline driven stabilization schemes, e.g. the streamline upwind or Galerkin, in that it properly accounts for the boundary layer region flow phenomena in presence of non‐equilibrium effects.

The numerical method here proposed has been designed for second‐order quadrangular finite‐elements. In particular, the Reynolds‐Averaged Navier‐Stokes equations with a non‐linear turbulence closure have been modelled using the stable mixed element pair Q2‐Q1.

This paper investigated the predicting capabilities of a finite element method stabilized formulation developed for the purpose of solving advection‐reaction‐diffusion problems. The new method, called SPG, demonstrates its suitability in solving the typical equations of turbulence eddy viscosity models.