INFLUENCE OF THE RANDOM STRUCTURE OF AN INITIAL MATERIAL 
ON THE PROCESSES OF SELF-PROPAGATING HIGH-TEMPERATURE
SYNTHESIS IN THIN FILMS

P. S. Grinchuk, O. S. Rabinovich, and N. V. Pavlyukevich

UDC 536.46

Numerical simulation of the process of self-propagating 
high-temperature synthesis in two-dimensional systems, the physical 
prototypes of which are thin films, has been performed. The emphasis 
has been on consideration of the heterogeneity of the system and randomness 
in the spatial arrangement of its different components. It has been 
found that taking into account the randomness factor, all other things 
being the same, leads to a substantial change in the basic characteristics 
of both the combustion process (for example, of the wave velocity) 
and the end product of synthesis. It has been demonstrated that, first, 
the critical level of external heat loss decreases significantly as 
compared to the case of a uniform distribution of the reagents and, 
second, this characteristic undergoes an abrupt increase in the vicinity 
of the reagent concentration corresponding to the percolation threshold 
for the lattice used in simulation. A qualitative comparison of the 
simulation results with experimental works has been carried out.

A. V. Luikov Heat and Mass Transfer Institute, National 
Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 15 P. Brovka Str., Minsk, 220072, 
Belarus; email: gps@hmti.ac.by. Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii 
Zhurnal, Vol. 77, No. 3, pp. 82-92, May-June, 2004. Original 
article submitted May 28, 2003.