Buoyancy-Surface Tension Instability Due to an Internal Heat Source

Abstract

The stability of a horizontal fluid layer with an internal heat source is considered using linear stability theory for the case of buoyancy and surface tension driven flow. Under the assumption that the neutral state is a stationary one, the method of a power series expansion is used to obtain the eigenvalue equation which is then computed numerically. As compared with the corresponding linear temperature case, it is found that the quadratic temperature profile makes the layer less stable and the cells appearing at marginal stability narrower.