Lectures On Mathematical Combustion Lecture 1 Pre Asymptotic Combustion Revisited

The description of reacting systems can be simplified when the so- called activation energy is large; the notion is an old one, but its full power is only released by modern singular perturbation theory. More than forty years ago, Frank-Kamenetskii introduced approximations based on large activation energy to construct a thermal theory of spontaneous combustion, and we shall start there. His problem, which neglects the fluid-mechanical effects of main concern to us, focuses attention on the reaction and thereby acts as a precursor for the lectures that follow. The problem and its generalizations have been the happy hunting grounds of mathematical analysts for many years, but it was not until quite recently that a complete description of the ignition and explosion processes was made available of Kapila and Kassoy (working separately) through activation-energy asymptotics, the main theme of these lectures.