Rayleigh-Taylor instability at viscous gas-viscoelastic fluid interface with heat and mass transfer

Abstract

The instability of interface formed by a viscous incompressible gas and viscoelastic liquid is studied when the interface is transferring heat and mass from one fluid phase to the other. The arrangement is taken in such a way that the viscous gas lies below the viscoelastic fluid and therefore interface experiences Rayleigh-Taylor type instability. The Oldroyd B-type viscoelastic fluid is considered for this study. The governing nonlinear partial differential equations are linearized for the perturbed state and the normal mode procedure is used to examine the interfacial instability. We have found that heat/mass transfer reduces the instability of the interface.