Thin-film Rayleigh–Taylor instability in the presence of a deep periodic corrugated wall

Abstract

Rayleigh–Taylor instability of a thin liquid film overlying a passive fluid is examined when the film is attached to a periodic wavy deep corrugated wall. A reduced-order long-wave model shows that the wavy wall enhances the instability toward rupture when the interface pattern is sub-harmonic to the wall pattern. An expression that approximates the growth constant of instability is obtained for any value of wall amplitude for the special case when the wall consists of two full waves and the interface consists of a full wave. Nonlinear computations of the interface evolution show that sliding is arrested by the wavy wall if a single liquid film residing over a passive fluid is considered but not necessarily when a bilayer sandwiched by a top wavy wall and bottom flat wall is considered. In the latter case interface tracking shows that primary and secondary troughs will evolve and subsequently slide along the flat wall due to symmetry-breaking. It is further shown that this sliding motion of the interface can ultimately be arrested by the top wavy wall, depending on the holdup of the fluids. In other words, there exists a critical value of the interface position beyond which the onset of the sliding motion is observed and below which the sliding is always arrested.