This thesis studies the traveling wavefront created by the autocatalytic cubic chemical reaction A + 2B → 3B involving two chemical species A and B, where A is the reactant and B is the auto-catalyst. The diffusion coefficients for A and B are given by DA and DB. These coefficients differ as a result of the chemical species having different size and/or weight. Theoretical results show there exist bounds, v* and v*, depending on DB/DA, where for speeds v ≥ v*, a traveling wave solution exists, while for speeds v < v*, a solution does not exist. Moreover, if DB ≤ DA, and v* and v* are similar to one another and in the order of DB/DA when it is small. On the other hand, when DA ≤ DB there exists a minimum speed vmin, such that there is a traveling wave solution if the speed v > vmin. The determination of vmin is very important in determining the dynamics of general solutions. To fill in the gap of the theoretical study, we use numerical methods to determine vmin for various cases. The numerical algorithm used is the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method (RK4).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-4683 |
| Date | 01 January 2008 |
| Creators | Blanken, Erika |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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