In this paper an axisymmetric RANS simulation of a bluff-body stabilized flame has been attempted using steady and unsteady flamelet models. The unsteady effects are considered in a postprocessing manner through the Eulerian particle flamelet model (EPFM). In this model the transient history of scalar dissipation rate, conditioned by stoichiometric mixture fraction, is required to generate unsteady flamelets and is obtained by tracing Eulerian particles. In this approach unsteady convective-diffusive transport equations are solved to consider the transport of Eulerian particles in the domain. Comparisons of the results of steady and unsteady calculations show that transient effects do not have much influence on major species, including OH, and the structure of the flame therefore can be successfully predicted by steady or unsteady approaches. However, it appears that slow processes such as NO formation can only be captured accurately if unsteady effects are taken into account, while steady simulations tend to overpredict NO. In this work turbulence has been modeled using the Reynolds stress model. Predictions of velocity, velocity rms, mean mixture fraction, and its rms show very good agreement with experiments. Performance of three detailed chemical mechanisms, the GRI Mech 2.11, the San Diego mechanism, and the GRI Mech 3.0, has also been evaluated in this study. All three mechanisms performed well with both steady and unsteady approaches and produced almost identical results for major species and OH. However, the difference between mechanisms and flamelet models becomes clearly apparent in the NO predictions. The unsteady model incorporating the GRI Mech 2.11 provided better predictions of NO than steady calculations and showed close agreement with experiments. The other two mechanisms showed overpredictions of NO with both unsteady and steady models. The level of overprediction is severe with the steady approach. GRI Mech 3.0 appears to overpredict NO by a factor of 2 compared to GRI Mech 2.11. The NO predictions by the San Diego mechanism fall between those of the two GRI mechanisms. The present study demonstrates the success of the EPFM model and when used with the GRI 2.11 mechanism predicts all flame properties and major and minor species very well, and most importantly the correct NO levels. (C) 2007 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.