A mechanism for rivulet formation in heated falling films

Abstract

We consider a long-wave evolution equation that governs a draining film on a heated plate and hence is capable of describing both surface-wave and thermocapillary instabilities. When the flow and heat transfer rates are moderate, we show, via weakly nonlinear analysis of a truncated system and numerical simulation of the full nonlinear evolution equation, that coupled temporal instabilities can create surface deformations that lead to an array of rivulets aligned with the flow. This work thus demonstrates a mechanism of rivulet formation based solely on instability phenomena.