Thermocapillary waves in a liquid film

This paper investigates two-dimensional waves in a heated liquid film in the presence of the thermocapillary effect. The waves in the film are described using the integral model. The first part of the paper considers film instability for cases of fixed temperature of the plate and fixed heat flux in the plate. The liquid temperature disturbance is calculated from the energy equation for arbitrary values of Peclet number. In the second part, the evolution of waves in a heated film is modeled based on the system of equations for film thickness, flow rate, and the energy equation. In numerical modeling of the wave evolution, the boundary of the region of growing disturbances agrees well with results of stability analysis. The calculations show that for a vertical film the thermocapillary effect leads to broadening of the instability region only at low Peclet numbers.