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Abstract
Barely flammable mixtures with small Lewis numbers can support “flame-balls”, stationary, spherical, prcmixed flames for which the mass-averaged velocity is zero everywhere. The theory of flame-balls is on a sound footing. Recent experiments by Whaling and Ronney in NASA's KC-135 show that, for certain mixtures, g-jitter can stretch a flame-ball into a long cylinder of flame, a “flame-string”. Flame-strings display a peristaltic instability and break up into discrete flame-balls, in appearance similar to a jet of liquid breaking up into drops under the influence of surface tension. A simple theory of flame-string structure and stability is described.