Oscillatory instability of Rayleigh-Marangoni-Bénard convection in two-layer liquid system (Q2574014)

For the two-layer system of Silicon oil (10 cSt) over Fluorinert (FC70), both linear instability analysis and 2D numerical simulation, show that the instability of the system depends strongly on the depth ratio \(H_r= H_1/H_2\) of the two-layer liquid. The oscillatory regime at the onset of the R-M-B convection enlarges with reducing \(\Gamma = \text{Ra}/\text{Ma}\) values. In the two-layer system of Silicon oil (2cSt) over water, it loses its stability and onsets to steady convection at first, then the steady convection bifurcates to oscillatory convection with increasing Rayleigh number Ra. This behaviour was found through numerical simulation in the case of \(\Gamma = 2.9\), \(\varepsilon =(\text{Ra}-\text{Ra}_c)/\text{Ra}_c = 1.0\), and \(H_r = 0.5\). The results found in this paper are different from the previous study of the R-B instability and show the strong effects of the thermocapillary force at the interface on the time-dependent oscillations at or after the onset of convection. A secondary oscillatory instability mechanism is proposed in order to explain the experimental observations of \textit{M. M. Degen, P. W. Colovas} and \textit{C. D. Andereck} [Phys. Rev. E 57, 6647--6659 (1998)].