Instabilities and bifurcations of liquid films flowing down a rotating fibre

Abstract

We consider the dynamics of a gravity-driven flow coating a vertical fibre rotating about its axis. This flow exhibits rich dynamics including the formation of bead-like structures and different types of steady or oscillatory travelling waves driven by a Rayleigh-Plateau mechanism modified by the presence of gravity and rotation. Linear stability shows that the axisymmetric mode dominates the instability when the rotation is slow, which allows us to derive a two-dimensional model equation under the long-wave assumption. The spatio-temporal dynamics and nonlinear wave solutions are then investigated by the model equation. The spatio-temporal stability analysis showed that the absolute instability is enhanced by the rotation. Steady travelling-wave states and relative periodic states are observed in the numerical simulations of the model equation, which show that the rotation tends to suppress the formation of relative periodic states. To examine this, a linear stability analysis of steady travelling waves is performed, indicating that the rotation has a stabilizing effect on the steady travelling waves. This result is adverse to the destabilizing effect of rotation on the linear stability of initially uniform films. A bifurcation analysis shows that the relative periodic state is born from the instability of steady travelling wave, which represents the coalescence and breakup process between a large droplet and a serial of much smaller droplets.