Deflagration and extinction of fuel droplet in a weakly-reactive atmosphere

The combustion of a fuel droplet in an oxidizing environment consisting of a small quantity of its own vapor is analyzed, in the limit of large activation energy, using matched asymptotic technique. The zeroth-order solution yields explicit expresssions for the steady deflagration characteristics indicating that with increasing ambient fuel vapor concentration the flame size and temperature both increase whereas the droplet surface regression rate remains unchanged. The first order expansion yields the flame structure and a set of numerically-obtained universal curves representing the extinction limits of the system.