Preface to special issue (Fast reaction - slow diffusion scenarios: PDE approximations and free boundaries)

This issue is focussed on the modeling, analysis and simulation of fast reaction-slow transport scenarios as well as corresponding fast-reaction limits. Within this framework, internal sharp and thin reaction layers form and travel through the spatial domain often producing unexpected effects. Such situations appear in a variety of significant applications; for example flame propagation in combustion, segregation and aggregation of biological individuals, chemical attack on reactive porous materials (such as concrete or natural stone), dissolution and precipitation reactions in minerals, tumor growth, grain boundary motion, and temperature-induced phase transitions in shape-memory alloys represent typical cases in which the fast process is localized within a a priori unknown internal active layer.