Effects of initial and boundary conditions on thermal explosion development

Abstract

The paper investigates effects of non-uniform initial conditions, as well as oscillatory boundary conditions on critical conditions for thermal explosion. It is shown that natural convection plays significant role in case of initial non-uniformities in the temperature distribution. The role of convection is quantified considering critical Frank-Kamenetskii parameters at different Rayleigh numbers, relative to the same parameter at no-convection conditions. Preliminary results are presented for the effect of oscillatory boundary conditions. It is demonstrated that the system may develop thermal explosion if oscillations are imposed at the boundaries of otherwise thermally stable medium.