  We report experimental results for the behavior of slow-combustion fronts in
the presence of a columnar defect with excess or reduced driving, and compare
them with those of mean-field theory. We also compare them with simulation
results for an analogous problem of driven flow of particles with hard-core
repulsion (ASEP) and a single defect bond with a different hopping probability.
The difference in the shape of the front profiles for excess vs. reduced
driving in the defect, clearly demonstrates the existence of a KPZ-type of
nonlinear term in the effective evolution equation for the slow-combustion
fronts. We also find that slow-combustion fronts display a faceted form for
large enough excess driving, and that there is a corresponding increase then in
the average front speed. This increase in the average front speed disappears at
a non-zero excess driving in agreement with the simulated behavior of the ASEP
model.
