Kinetic Roughening in Slow Combustion of Paper

Abstract

We present results from an experimental study on the kinetic roughening of slow combustion fronts in paper sheets. The sheets were positioned inside a combustion chamber and ignited from the top to minimize convection effects. The emerging fronts were videotaped and digitized to obtain their time-dependent heights. The data were analyzed by calculating two-point correlation functions in the saturated regime. Both the growth and roughening exponents were determined and found consistent with the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation, in agreement with recent theoretical work.