Interaction of Thermal Explosion and Natural Convection: Critical Conditions and New Oscillating Regimes (Q4785607)

This paper studies analytically and numerically the influence of natural convection on thermal explosion in a two-dimensional square vessel filled with a reactant mixture. It is assumed that the vertical walls of the vessel are adiabatic, and horizontal walls are infinitely conducting with an equal constant temperature \(T_0\). Either the fluid can encounter thermal explosion (a rapid buildup of temperature modeled in Frank-Kamenetskii theory by a temperature blow-up) or, after a characteristic time, there exists a slowly varying solution (modeled in this theory by a stationary solution at frozen composition), where the chemical heat release is balanced by the heat losses through the walls. The purpose of this paper is to couple the heat equation which governs the classical explosion limits to the hydrodynamics through natural convection. The governing non-dimensional equations are Navier-Stokes equations in the Oberbeck-Boussinesq approximation coupled to the heat equation with an exponential chemical source term. The equations in vorticity-stream function-temperature formulation are solved using an alternative direction finite difference approximation. A linear stability analysis, which allows the prediction of the onset of convection not too close to the explosion limit, is also presented. The authors also propose a model problem, which is able to reproduce the bifurcation behavior of the global system close to critical conditions for explosion. Numerical results show the coexistence of 1-vortex and 2-vortex regimes from which thermal explosion can occur.