Analysis of Thermal Stability in a Convecting and Radiating Two-Step Reactive Slab

Abstract EN

This paper investigates the combined effects of convective and radiative heat loss on thermal stability of a rectangular slab of combustible materials with internal heat generation due to a two-step exothermic chemical reaction, taking the diffusion of the reactant into account and assuming a variable (temperature dependent) preexponential factor.

The nonlinear differential equation governing the transient reaction-diffusion problem is obtained and tackled numerically using a semidiscretization finite difference technique.

A special type of Hermite-Padé approximants coupled with perturbation technique are employed to analyze the effects of various embedded thermophysical parameters on the steady state problem.

Important properties of the temperature field including thermal stability conditions are presented graphically and discussed quantitatively.