Enhancement of the traveling front speeds in reaction-diffusion equations with advection

We establish rigorous lower bounds on the speed of traveling fronts and on the bulk burning rate in reaction-diffusion equation with passive advection . The non-linearity is assumed to be of either KPP or ignition type. We con sider two main classes of Rows. Percolating flows, which are characterized by the presence of long tubes of streamlines mixing hot and cold material, lead to strong speed-up of burning which is linear in the amplitude of the flow, U. On the other hand the cellular flows, which have closed streamline s, are shown to produce weaker increase in reaction. For such flows we get a lower bound which grows as U-1/5 for a large amplitude of the flow. (C) 2 001 Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.