Stability of a viscous liquid film flowing down a periodic surface

The paper is devoted to a theoretical analysis of linear stability of the viscous liquid film flowing down a wavy surface. The study is based on the Navier-Stokes equations in their full statement. The developed numerical algorithm allows us to obtain pioneer results in the stability of the film flow down a corrugated surface without asymptotic approximations in a wide range over Reynolds and Kapitsa's numbers. It is shown that in the case of moderate Reynolds numbers there is a region of the corrugation parameters (amplitude and period) where all disturbances decay in time and the wall corrugation demonstrates a stabilizing effect. At the same time, there exist corrugation parameters at which the steady-state solution is unstable with respect to perturbations of the same period as the period of corrugation. In this case the waveless solution cannot be observed in reality and the wall corrugation demonstrates a destabilizing effect. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.