The gravity-driven flow of a thin liquid film down a uniformly heated vertical fiber is considered. This is an unstable open flow that exhibits rich dynamics including the formation of droplets, or beads, driven by a Rayleigh-Plateau mechanism modified by the presence of gravity as well as the variation of surface tension induced by temperature disturbance at the interface. A linear stability analysis and a nonlinear simulation are performed to investigate the dynamic of axisymmetric disturbances. The results showed that the Marangoni instability and the Rayleigh-Plateau instability reinforce each other. With the increase of the thermocapillary effect, the fiber flow has a tendency to break up into smaller droplets.

[http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.90.033005]

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 11102211, No. 11072249, and No. 50890182) and the Strategic Pioneer Program on Space Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grants No. XDA04073000 and No. XDA04020202-02).

The article was published as:

Liu R,Liu QS. Thermocapillary Effect On The Dynamics Of Viscous Beads On Vertical Fiber[J].Physical Review E,2014,90(3):33005.