Moving Striations in Tapered Discharge Tubes

Abstract

It is reported that the wavelength of moving striations is experimentally proportional to Rⁿ, where R is the tube radius and index n ranges from 1.5 to 2.0. Those measurements are done using tapered discharge tubes. A theory that can give a general explanation of the moving striations is introduced. The relation between the wavelength and the tube radius obtained from those theoretical considerations is in a good agreement with the experimental results.