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Consider the gravity-driven flow of a thin liquid film down a vertical fibre. A model of two coupled evolution equations for the local film thickness h and the local flow rate q is formulated within the framework of the long-wave and boundary-layer approximations. The model accounts for inertia and streamwise viscous diffusion. Evolution equations obtained by previous authors are recovered in the appropriate limit. Comparisons to experimental results show good agreement in both linear and nonlinear regimes. Viscous diffusion effects are found to have a stabilizing dispersive effect on the linear waves. Time-dependent computations of the spatial evolution of the film reveal a strong influence of streamwise viscous diffusion on the dynamics of the flow and the wave selection process.

The stability of a viscous film flowing down a vertical fiber under the action of gravity is analyzed both experimentally and theoretically. At large or small film thicknesses, the instability is convective, whereas an absolute instability mode is observed in an intermediate range of film thicknesses for fibers of small enough radius. The onset of the experimental irregular wavy regime corresponds precisely to the theoretical prediction of the threshold of the convective instability.

We consider a thin layer of a viscous fluid flowing down a uniformly heated planar wall. The heating generates a temperature distribution on the free surface which in turn induces surface tension gradients. We model this thermocapillary flow by using the Shkadov integral-boundary-layer (IBL) approximation of the Navier–Stokes/energy equations and associated free-surface boundary conditions. Our linear stability analysis of the flat-film solution is in good agreement with the Goussis & Kelly (1991) stability results from the Orr–Sommerfeld eigenvalue problem of the full Navier–Stokes/energy equations. We numerically construct nonlinear solutions of the solitary wave type for the IBL approximation and the Benney-type equation developed by Joo et al. (1991) using the usual long-wave approximation. The two approaches give similar solitary wave solutions up to an $O(1)$ Reynolds number above which the solitary wave solution branch obtained by the Joo et al. equation is unrealistic, with branch multiplicity and limit points. The IBL approximation on the other hand has no limit points and predicts the existence of solitary waves for all Reynolds numbers. Finally, in the region of small film thicknesses where the Marangoni forces dominate inertia forces, our IBL system reduces to a single equation for the film thickness that contains only one parameter. When this parameter tends to zero, both the solitary wave speed and the maximum amplitude tend to infinity.

In a previous work, two-dimensional film flows were modelled using a weighted-residual approach that led to a four-equation model consistent at order 2 . A two-equation model resulted from a subsequent simplification but at the cost of lowering the degree of the approximation to order only (Ruyer-Quil & Manneville 2000). A Padé approximant technique is applied here to derive a refined two-equation model consistent at order 2 . This model, formulated in terms of coupled evolution equations for the film thickness h and the flow rate q, accounts for inertia effects due to the deviations of the velocity profile from the parabolic shape, and closely sticks to the asymptotic long-wave expansion in the appropriate limit. Comparisons of two-dimensional wave properties with experiments and direct numerical simulations show good agreement for the range of parameters where a two-dimensional wavy motion is reported in experiments.The stability of two-dimensional travelling waves against three-dimensional perturbations is investigated based on the extension of the models to include spanwise dependence. The secondary instability is found to be not much selective, which explains the widespread presence of the synchronous instability observed in the experiments by Liu et al. (1995) whereas Floquet analysis predicts a subharmonic scenario in most cases. Three-dimensional wave patterns are next computed assuming periodic boundary conditions. Transition from 2D to 3D flows is shown to be strongly dependent on initial conditions. The herringbone patterns, the synchronously deformed fronts and the threedimensional solitary waves observed in experiments (Liu et al. 1995;Park & Nosoko 2003;Alekseenko et al. 1994) are recovered using our regularised model, which is found to be an excellent compromise between the complete model, which has seven equations, and the simplified model, which does not include the second-order inertia corrections. Those corrections are found to play a role in the selection of the type of secondary instability as well as of the spanwise wavelength of the emerging pattern.

A new model of film flow down an inclined plane is derived by a method combining results of the classical long wavelength expansion to a weighted-residuals technique. It can be expressed as a set of three coupled evolution equations for three slowly varying fields, the thickness h, the flow-rate q, and a new variable τ that measures the departure of the wall shear from the shear predicted by a parabolic velocity profile. Results of a preliminary study are in good agreement with theoretical asymptotic properties close to the instability threshold, laboratory experiments beyond threshold and numerical simulations of the full Navier-Stokes equations.

International audienceWe study the reliability of two-dimensional models of film flows down inclined planes obtained by us [Ruyer-Quil and Manneville, Eur. Phys. J. B 15, 357 (2000)] using weighted-residual methods combined with a standard long-wavelength expansion. Such models typically involve the local thickness h of the film, the local flow rate q, and possibly other local quantities averaged over the thickness, thus eliminating the cross-stream degrees of freedom. At the linear stage, the predicted properties of the wave packets are in excellent agreement with exact results obtained by Brevdo [J. Fluid Mech. 396, 37 (1999)]. The nonlinear development of waves is also satisfactorily recovered as evidenced by comparisons with laboratory experiments by Liu [Phys. Fluids 7, 55 (1995)] and with numerical simulations by Ramaswamy [J. Fluid Mech. 325, 163 (1996)]. Within the modeling strategy based on a polynomial expansion of the velocity field, optimal models have been shown to exist at a given order in the long-wavelength expansion. Convergence towards the optimum is studied as the order of the weighted-residual approximation is increased. Our models accurately and economically predict linear and nonlinear properties of film flows up to relatively high Reynolds numbers, thus offering valuable theoretical and applied study perspectives. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics