Variable time-stepping exponential integrators for chemical reactors with analytical Jacobians

Computational chemical combustion problems are known to be stiff, and are typically solved with implicit time integration methods. A novel exponential time integrator, EPI3V, is introduced and applied to a spatially homogeneous isobaric reactive mixture. Three chemical mechanism of increasing complexity are considered, and in two cases the novel method can perform similar if not marginally better to a well-known implementation of a BDF implicit method. In one specific case we see relative performance degradation of the EPI3V to the implicit method. Despite this, the novel exponential method does converge for this case. A performance analysis of the exponential method is provided, demonstrating possible avenues for performance improvement.