The instability of nonlinear surface waves in an electrified liquid jet

Abstract

We investigate the weakly nonlinear stability of surface waves of a liquid jet. In this work, the liquids are uniformly streaming through two porous media and the gravitational effects are neglected. The system is acted upon by a uniform tangential electric field, that is parallel to the jet axis. The equations of motion are linearly treated and solved in the light of nonlinear boundary conditions. Therefore, the boundary-value problem leads to a nonlinear characteristic second-order differential equation. This characterized equation has a complex nature. The nonlinearity is kept up to the third degree. It is used to judge the behavior of the surface evolution. According to the linear stability theory, we derive the dispersion relation that accounts for the growth waves. The stability criterion is discussed analytically and a stability picture is identified for a chosen sample system. Several special cases are recovered upon appropriate data choices. In order to derive the Ginsburg-Landau equation for the general case, in the nonlinear approach, we used the method of multiple timescales with the aid of the Taylor expansion. This equation describes the competition between nonlinearity and the linear dispersion relation. As a special case for non-porous media where there is no streaming, we obtained the well-known nonlinear Schrödinger equation as it has been derived by others. The stability criteria are expressed theoretically in terms of various parameters of the problem. Stability diagrams are obtained for a set of physical parameters. We found new instability regions in the parameter space. These regions are due to the nonlinear effects.