Zeldovich number
The Zeldovich number is a dimensionless number which provides a quantitative measure for the activation energy of a chemical reaction which appears in the Arrhenius exponent, named after the Russian scientist Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich, who along with David A. Frank-Kamenetskii, first introduced in their paper in 1938. In 1983, ICDERS meeting at Poitiers, it was decided that the non-dimensional number will be named after Zeldovich.
It is defined as
where
- is the activation energy of the reaction
- is the universal gas constant
- is the burnt gas temperature
- is the unburnt mixture temperature.
For typical combustion phenomena, the value for Zel'dovich number lies in the range. Activation energy asymptotics uses this number as the large parameter of expansion.