Hydrothermal waves and corotating rolls in laterally heated convection in simple liquids (Q2574001)

The authors discuss stability of a liquid layer open to atmosphere and subjected to horizontal temperature gradient. As a consequence of magnitude of this gradient the liquid develops a flow parallel to the interface. Usually it is mono-cellular flowing upward at the hot end and downward at the cold end. The authors use experimentally established relations that involve several non-dimensional numbers to study instability of the liquid layer. They use the extremum of the Marangoni number, depending on the derivative with respect to temperature \(T\) of the surface tension \(\sigma(T)\), to predict the onset of instability. The ratio between this Marangoni number, which measures thermocapillary effects, and the Rayleigh number, measuring buoyancy, is another dimensionless number called the dynamic bond number, which is sensitive to the depth of the fluid. The predominantly linear approximations used by the authors are compared to known experimental results.