Stability of a flame front in a divergent flow (Q2446197)

The authors have studied the problem of stability of a flame front in a divergent flow. They considered a two-dimensional flow instability in a nonuniform flow of a combustible mixture and studied the evolution of perturbations of the plane surface of a flame front. It has been shown that the presence of a spreading front leads to a qualitative change in the behavior of perturbations in the neighborhood. There appears to be two main factors that prevent the infinite growth of perturbations of the surface of the flame front. One is the increase in the wave length of perturbations due to the spreading of the gas in the combustion front and the other is the presence of the gradient of the normal velocity of the flow that contains the flame front.