In large-eddy simulations (LES) of gas-particle flows most investigators use single-phase subgrid scale (SGS) stress models. The Interaction between the two-phase SGS stresses is not fully taken into account. In this paper, a unified second-order moment (USM) two-phase SGS stress model for the LES of gas-particle flows is proposed, in which the interaction between the two-phase SGS stresses and anisotropy of the two-phase SGS stresses is fully taken into account. The proposed model is used in the LES of swirling gas-particle flows, together with RANS modeling using the USM two-phase turbulence model. The instantaneous results exhibit the multiple recirculating gas flow structure similar to that of the single-phase swirling flows, but the particle flow structure shows less vortices. The two-phase time-averaged velocities and RMS fluctuation velocities predicted by both LES-USM and RANS-USM models are almost the same and are in good agreement with the experimental results. However, for two-phase RMS fluctuation velocities, the LES-USM results are somewhat better than the RANS-USM results. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.