The closure of the filtered reaction rate of the reaction progress variable using an algebraic model for Favre-filtered Scalar Dissipation Rate (SDR) (N) over tilde (c) in turbulent premixed combustion has been assessed in the context of Large Eddy Simulations (LES). This assessment consists of a priori Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) analysis based on freely propagating statistically planar turbulent premixed flames and a posteriori analysis, involving the LES simulations of a well-documented rectangular dump combustor configuration with sudden expansion (i.e. ORACLES burner) and a premixed flame stabilised on a triangular bluff body flame holder (i.e. Volvo Rig). It has been found that the newly developed SDR model satisfactorily captures (N) over tilde (c) obtained from explicitly filtered DNS data. The predictions of this SDR based LES closure in the ORACLES burner and Volvo Rig configurations exhibit good agreement with experimental results without requiring any major modification to the model parameters. The predictions of the SDR model for the LES of the ORACLES burner and Volvo Rig have been compared to those of two algebraic Flame Surface Density (FSD) models, which yielded satisfactory agreement with experimental data in a previous analysis. The performance of the SDR based closure remains either comparable to or better than the FSD based closures for the two test configurations considered in this analysis. (C) 2014 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.