Instability of oxidation front during laser heating of metals in oxidizing atmosphere

Consideration is given to the features of a heterogeneous reaction - oxidation of metals by laser heating in the air. It is shown that even at uniform distribution of irradiation along the metal surface there can be local instabilities leading to nonuniformities of the oxide layer thickness. The development of localized (axially symmetric) perturbations is investigated. The role of surface and thermal diffusion in the development of instabilities is analysed in detail. In particular, it is shown that diffusion processes can lead to stabilization of instabilities of spatial scale considerably differing from the characteristic length of reagent diffusion up to the moment of a reaction