Group theoretical modeling of thermal explosion with reactant consumption

Today engineering and science researchers routinely confront problems in mathematical modeling involving nonlinear differential equations. Many mathematical models formulated in terms of nonlinear differential equations can be successfully treated and solved by Lie group methods. Lie group analysis is especially valuable in investigating nonlinear differential equations, for its algorithms act as reliably as for linear cases. The aim of this article is to provide the group theoretical modeling of the symmetrical heating of an exothermally reacting medium with approximations to the body’s temperature distribution similar to those made by Thomas [17] and Squire [15]. The quantitative results were found to be in a good agreement with Adler and Enig in [1], where the authors were comparing the integral curves corresponding to the critical conditions for the first-order reaction. Further development of the modeling by including the critical temperature is proposed. Overall, it is shown, in particular, that the application of Lie group analysis allows one to extend the previous analytic results for the first order reactions to nth order ones.