A numerical investigation of a bluff-body stabilised nonpremixedflame, and the corresponding nonreacting flow, has been performed withdifferential Reynolds-stress models (DRSMs). The equilibrium chemistry model is employed and an assumed-shape beta function PDFapproach is used to represent the interaction between turbulence andchemistry. The Reynolds flux of the mixture fraction is obtained from atransport equation, hence a full second moment closure is used. Toclarify the applicability of the existing DRSMs in this complex flame,several models, including LRR-IP model, JM model, SSG model as well as amodified LRR-IP model, have been applied and evaluated. The existingmodels, with default values of the coefficients, cannot provide overallsatisfactory predictions for this challenging test case. The standardLRR-IP model over predicts the centreline velocity decay rate, andtherefore does not perform satisfactory. The modified LRR-IP model, withmodel constant C ∈1 = 1.6 instead of the standard value1.44 (here named BM-M1), gives better results for the mean velocity.However in the nonreacting case this does not lead to improvement inpredicting rms fluctuating velocities especially downstream of therecirculation zone. Motivated by the need to improve the prediction, anew modification of the LRR-IP model is proposed (BM-M2), with modelconstant C 2 = 0.7in the pressure strain correlation rather thanthe standard value 0.6. With the new modified model, a verysignificant improvement of the prediction of flow field is obtained inthe nonreacting case, whereas in the reacting case the prediction ofthe flow field is of the same overall quality as with BM-M1. This showsthat some DRSMs have different behaviour in the nonreacting case andthe reacting case. In the reacting case also the mean and variance ofmixture fraction are considered and it is found that the best resultsare obtained with the BM-M1 model, with SSG as second best. Combiningthe results for flow field and mixture fraction field it is concludedthat the BM-M1 model is recommended for further studies of thisbluff-body stabilised flame. Grid independence of the result isdemonstrated.