Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 January 2019
The dynamics of $A+B\rightarrow C$ fronts is analysed numerically in a radial geometry. We are interested to understand miscible fingering instabilities when the simple chemical reaction changes the viscosity of the fluid locally and a non-monotonic viscosity profile with a global maximum or minimum is formed. We consider viscosity-matched reactants
$A$ and
$B$ generating a product
$C$ having different viscosity than the reactants. Depending on the effect of
$C$ on the viscosity relative to the reactants, different viscous fingering (VF) patterns are captured which are in good qualitative agreement with the existing radial experiments. We have found that, for a given chemical reaction rate, an unfavourable viscosity contrast is not always sufficient to trigger the instability. For every fixed Péclet number (
$Pe$), these effects of chemical reaction on VF are summarized in the Damköhler number (
$Da$)
$-$ the log-mobility ratio (
$R_{c}$) parameter space that exhibits a stable region separating two unstable regions corresponding to the cases of more and less viscous product. Fixing
$Pe$, we determine
$Da$-dependent critical log-mobility ratios
$R_{c}^{+}$ and
$R_{c}^{-}$ such that no VF is observable whenever
$R_{c}^{-}\leqslant R_{c}\leqslant R_{c}^{+}$. The effect of geometry is observable on the onset of instability, where we obtain significant differences from existing results in the rectilinear geometry.
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