After more than 50 years of investigation, Large Eddy Simulation has demonstrated its benefit for unsteady flow simulation and is currently applied in a wide variety of engineering applications. Several classes of subgrid scale models were proposed, including the well known eddy viscosity models, usually preferred because of their simplicities and robustness. The formulation of these models includes a coefficient which needs to be analyzed for each flow configuration and which has been investigated in simple geometries.The aim of the present work is to perform a-priori analysis of subgrid scale models in plane channel flow and in a converging-diverging channel flow at fairly large Reynolds number.The influences of the filter type and filter width are systematically addressed in analyses of all statistics. The SGS energy transfer and energy dissipation are firstly analyzed.Then, the a priori estimate of the coefficients of subgrid scale models, including the standard Smagorinsky, Dynamic Smagorinsky, the WALE and the new updated sigma models, are investigated in detail. It is shown that, the coefficients of the four models are non-homogeneous in the simulation domain and are largely affected by the adverse pressure gradient, especially in the recirculation region. Finally, the correlations between the exact quantities and their counterparts modeled by the subgrid scale models with respect to three criteria are explored. The results show a low predictability of subgrid scale models and a strong variability of the modeled quantities in the region of strong adverse pressure gradient. This may explain the difficulty to obtain accurate LES results in such flow configuration
