Propagation of a burn front through a long channel

We studied experimentally the phenomenology, rules, and mechanism of the propagation of a burn front through iron—aluminum thermite in a long channel. We describe the dynamics of the change of orientation of the burn front as a function of the caloric content of the mixture, and we propose a mechanism for these dynamics. We show that there exist burn limits in the vertical and lengthwise directions dependent on the channel width and the caloric content of the mixture.