Thermal runaway

Summary

Thermal runaway is a self-accelerating rise of temperature in a system that produces heat. It happens when warming the system raises its rate of heat production faster than its rate of heat loss. Then no balance between production and loss is reached, and the temperature keeps rising. It is the mechanism of thermal explosions of reacting mixtures and of failures of batteries and electronic components. The classical models are Semenov's theory and Frank-Kamenetskii theory. See the definition.