No label defined (Q4336833)

Surfactant transfer across a deformable interface between two adjacent immiscible bulks results in the excitation of convective motion or oscillation. A potential barrier and a desorption into the gas phase result in delay of the arrival time of the surfactant from either bulk to the surface. The barrier delineates in the liquid volume a bulk where the surfactant only diffuses, a sublayer is glued to the interface, and the transfer between the layer and sublayer is not in equilibrium. The physico-chemical mechanisms underlying the longitudinal waves (LW) and transverse waves (TW) are identified in terms of harmonic oscillators, and it is shown that high frequencies are relevant to the description of neutral oscillatory cases. For capillary gravity waves, the Marangoni compositional elasticity is needed. The desorption into the gas has a stabilizing effect at low frequencies. For frequencies beyond a critical value, the LW exist and are monitored by the bulk diffusion. The critical Marangoni numbers for both TW and LW are reached for frequencies that are nearer than when the barrier is absent. As the Marangoni number rises, the coupling of the LW and TW becomes significant, and more energy is pumped away from the LW excitations to the TW excitations, and the relative importance of the TW increases. This persists till the viscous damping removes both the LW and TW and stabilizes all processes. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0841.00021].