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Onset Of Convection For Autocatalytic Reaction Fronts In A Vertical Slab, J. Huang, D. A. Vasquez, Boyd F. Edwards, P. Kolodner

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A fully three-dimensional linear stability analysis shows that ascending autocatalytic reaction fronts in vertical slabs are unstable to convection for large-wavelength perturbations at all finite values of the dimensionless driving parameter S=δga³/νD_C. This parameter involves a fractional density difference δ between the unreacted and reacted fluids, the acceleration of gravity g, the slab width a, the kinematic viscosity ν, and the catalyst molecular diffusivity D_C. Buoyancy dominates over the competing curvature dependence of the front velocity in a band 0c of unstable dimensionless wave numbers, with q_c→S/24 as S→0 and q_{c …}