Stability of a viscous liquid jet in a high-frequency alternating electric field

Abstract

The stability of a liquid electrolyte placed in a tangential electric field oscillating harmonically at high frequency is considered assuming that the liquid is viscous and Newtonian. It is shown that, if the Peclet number calculated from the thickness of the Debye layer is small, the problem can be solved separately for the electrodynamic part of the problem in the Debye layer and for the hydrodynamic part of the problem in the jet. The linear stability of the trivial solution of the problem is investigated. A dispersion relation is derived and used to study the effect of the amplitude and frequency of electric field oscillations on the stability of the jet. It is shown that the presence of the external oscillating field has a stabilizing effect on the jet. The basic stability regimes as functions of the control parameters of the problem and bifurcation changes in the regimes are investigated.