The thermal stability of shell burning and the progress of shell flashing in gas-accreting neutron stars are studied, using semianalytical methods to explain the mechanism of variations in type I X-ray burst profiles. Hydrogen-shell burning is found to be stabilized for a fairly high accretion rate because of the saturation of CNO cycles set by intervening beta decays, while helium-shell burning is thermally unstable. The progress of nuclear reactions during shell flashes is followed numerically, showing that the shell flashes grow in various strengths depending on the mixture of helium and hydrogen, as well as on the pressure of the burning shell.
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Fujimoto et al. (1981) studied this question.