Construction of stationary waves on a falling film (Q2367874)

We present a spectral-element method for the title multi-scale free surface problem. A boundary layer approximation of the equation of motion allows a Fourier expansion in the streamwise direction in conjunction with a domain decomposition in the direction normal to the wall that eliminates numerical instability. This mixed method hence enjoys both the exponential convergence rate of a spectral technique and the numerical advantage provided by a compactly supported basis which yields sparse projected differential operators. All stationary wave families, parameterized by the wavelength, are then constructed using a Newton continuation scheme. The constructed waves are favorably compared to experimentally measured wave shapes.