In this paper, the development of frontal polymerization under conditions of free convective motion of a
reactive mixture is studied experimentally and numerically. The convection is caused by the reaction
exothermicity and by the density change, because the polymer is more dense than the monomer. The propagation
of polymerization fronts with convection is studied for the photoinitiated polymerization of an aqueous solution
of acrylamide. Comparison of terrestrial and space experiments with the results of numerical simulation shows
that convection can lead to the formation of inhomogeneities in the polymer product; it can change the speed
of propagation of the reaction front and even change the reaction from frontal to volumetric.
The work is devoted to numerical simulations of the interaction of heat explosion with natural convection. The model consists of the heat equation with a nonlinear source term describing heat production due to an exothermic chemical reaction coupled with the Navier-Stokes equations under the Boussinesq approximation. We show how complex regimes appear through successive bifurcations leading from a stable stationary temperature distribution without convection to a stationary symmetric convective solution, stationary asymmetric convection, periodic in time oscillations, and finally aperiodic oscillations. A simplified model problem is suggested. It describes the main features of solutions of the complete problem.
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