On the Dynamics of the Ignition of Paper and Catastrophe Theory

The purpose of this note is to study the phenomenon of ignition of paper considered by Shivadev and Emmons from the viewpoint of stability theory and catastrophe theory. It is shown that ignition results from a sudden or catastrophic change of the kinetics governing temperature from a locally stable to a locally unstable equation. Using the model of Shivadev and Emmons and the above criterion, equations for the ignition temperature and the corresponding heat flux are derived. These equations are shown to provide a good match to the experimental data of Reference. Further extensions of this work to combustion and the appearance of cusp catastrophes are also discussed.