A plus B → C reaction fronts in Hele-Shaw cells under modulated gravitational acceleration

The dynamics of A + B -> C reaction fronts is studied under modulated gravitational acceleration by means of a combination of parabolic flight experiments and numerical simulations. During modulated gravity the front position undergoes periodic modulation with an accelerated front propagation under hyper-gravity together with a slowing down under low gravity. The underlying reason for this is an amplification and a decay, respectively, of the buoyancy-driven double vortex associated with the front propagation under standard gravitational acceleration, as explained by reaction-diffusion-convection simulations of convection around an A + B -> C front. Deeper insights into the correlation between grey-value changes in the experimental shadowgraph images and characteristic changes in the concentration profiles are obtained by a numerical simulation of the imaging process.