Studying the effect
of coupling and forcing of oscillators is a
significant area of interest within nonlinear dynamics and has provided
evidence of many interesting phenomena, such as synchronization, beating,
oscillatory death, and phase resetting. Many studies have also reported
along this line in reaction–diffusion systems, which are preferably
explored experimentally by using open reactors. These reactors consist
of one or two homogeneous (well-stirred) tanks, which provide the
boundary conditions for a spatially distributed part. The spatiotemporal
dynamics of this configuration in the presence of temporal oscillations
in the homogeneous part has not been systematically investigated.
This paper aims to explore numerically the effect of time-periodic
boundary conditions on the dynamics of open reactors provided by autonomous
and forced oscillations in the well-stirred part. A simple model of
pH oscillators can produce various phenomena under these conditions,
for example, superposition and modulation of spatiotemporal oscillations
and forced bursting. The autonomous oscillatory boundary conditions
can be generated by the same kinetic instabilities that result in
spatiotemporal oscillations in the spatially distributed part. The
forced oscillations are induced by sinusoidal modulation on the inflow
concentration of the activator in the tank. The simulations confirmed
that this type of forcing is more effective when the modulation period
is longer than the residence time of the well-stirred part. The use
of time-periodic boundary conditions may open a new perspective in
the control and design of spatiotemporal phenomena in open one-side-fed
and two-side-fed reactors.