Stability conditions of an electrified miscible viscous fluid sheet

Abstract

The Kelvin–Helmholtz problem of viscous fluids under the influence of a normal periodic electric field in the absence of surface charges is studied. The system is composed of a streaming dielectric fluid sheet of finite thickness embedded between two different streaming finite dielectric fluids. The interfaces permit mass and heat transfer. Because of the complexity of the considered system, a mathematical simplification is adopted. The weak viscous effects are taken into account so that their contributions are incorporated into the boundary conditions. Therefore, the equations of motion are solved in the absence of viscous effects. The boundary value problem leads to two simultaneous Mathieu equations of damped terms having complex coefficients. The symmetric and antisymmetric deformations reduced the coupled Mathieu equations to a single Mathieu equation. The classical stability criterion is found to be substantially modified due to the effect of mass and heat transfer. The analytical results are numerically confirmed. It is found that the sheet thickness and mass and heat transfer parameters have a dual influence on the stability criteria. It is also found that the field frequency has a stabilizing influence especially at small values of the wave number. In contrast to the case of a pure inviscid fluid, it is found that the uniform normal electric field plays a dual role in the stability criteria. This role depends on the choice of the numerical values of the physical parameters of the system under consideration.