A Free Boundary Problem Arising in Smoulder Combustion

Abstract

The smouldering combustion is modeled as a free boundary problem here. By using the Duvaut's transform, the problem is reduced to a variational inequality. Existence and uniqueness are established. Tbe properties of the free boundary are studied in various cases. The asymptotic behavior of the free boundary with respect to the parameter is rigorously proved, which confirms the result of a previous work by J. Adler and D. M. Herbert, obtained by using asymptotic expansion. Furthermore, we show that the time dependent problem will actually converge to a travelling wave solution if the boundary data converge to the corresponding travelling wave solution.