抄録
The equilibrium problem of a liquid metallic drop in the external field produced by two sets of coils (for heating and positioning), carrying currents at different frequencies, in ambient of microgravity has been analytically considered. The free boundary problem resulting from considering infinite conductivity for the drop and its surface tension has been solved almost exactly. The stability of such equilibria with respect to rigid displacements has also been explicitly calculated. Axial and lateral shifts are stable and for rigid rotational displacements restoring torques are also obtained. However, the positioning coils can give unstable contribution if the elongation of the drop is smaller than about two. This can offer an explanation to the some time destroying motion of the drop in TEMPUS experiments when the heating coil was switched off.
