| Contents |
| We present experimental studies of the behavior of reaction fronts propagating in laminar fluid flows. This is an issue with applications to a wide range of systems including microfluidic chemical reactors, cellular-scale processes in biological systems, and blooms of phytoplankton in the oceans. To analyze and predict the behavior of the fronts, we generalize tools developed to describe passive mixing. In particular, the concept of an invariant manifold is expanded to account for reactive burning. These ``burning invariant manifolds'' (BIMs) are barriers that locally block the motion of reaction fronts. Unlike invariant manifolds for passive transport, however, the BIMs are barriers for front propagation in one direction only. These ideas are tested and illustrated experimentally in a chain of alternating vortices, a spatially-random flow, and vortex flows with imposed winds. |
|