A Review on Hydrodynamical Stability of Thin Film Flowing Along an Inclined Plane

Abstract

The dynamics and stability of thin liquid films have fascinated scientists over many decades. Thin film flows occur over a wide range of length scales and are central to numerous areas of engineering, geophysics and biophysics. These include nanofluidics and microfluidics, lava flows, coating flows, tear-film rupture, dynamics of continental ice sheets and surfactant replacement therapy. Study of falling film instability has its wide applications in the practical field of industry and engineering. Practical applications in industrial processing motivate the recent research to investigate the factors which may affect the formation of waves on the surface of the coating layers and/or to determine the ways to overcome or to minimize the unwanted factors within the desired limit of tolerance. The dynamics of a liquid film flowing down a plane under the action of gravity is a problem which appears in many technological and natural systems, namely large scale geophysical environments such as lava flows or spillways, daily life scenarios such as water flowing down a window pane or a slippery road on a rainy day, chemical engineering processes such as evaporators, heat exchanges and falling film reactors or surface coating. The aim of this paper is to throw light on the studies conducted on hydrodynamical stability.