Development of Dominating Waves From Small Disturbances in Falling Viscous-Liquid Films

Abstract

For wavy liquid films, the principle of selection of the periodic solutions realized experimentally as regular waves is justified. By means of numerical methods, the bifurcations of the families of steady periodic waves and the attractors of the corresponding nonstationary problem are systematically studied. A comparison of the bifurcations and the attractors shows that, when several periodic solutions exist for a given wave number, the solution with the maximum wave amplitude and the maximum phase velocity develops from small initial disturbances (the dominating wave regime). With wave number variation, near the bifurcation points the attractor passes discontinuously from one family to another. This passage is accompanied by the appearance of two-periodic solutions in small neighborhoods of these points. The relations between the calculated parameters of the dominating waves are in a good agreement with all the available experimental data.