Effect of surfactants on film flow down a periodic wall

Abstract

The effect of an insoluble surfactant on the gravity-driven flow of a liquid film down an inclined wall with periodic undulations or indentations is investigated in the limit of vanishing Reynolds number. A perturbation analysis for walls with small-amplitude sinusoidal corrugations reveals that the surfactant amplifies the deformation of the film surface, though it also renders the film thickness more uniform over the inclined surface. The effect of the surfactant is most significant when the film thickness is less than half the wall period. To explain the deforming influence of the surfactant, a linear stability analysis of film flow down an inclined plane is undertaken for two-dimensional perturbations. The results reveal the occurrence of a Marangoni normal mode whose rate of decay is lower than that of the single mode occurring in the absence of surfactants. Numerical methods based on a combined boundary-element/finite-volume method are implemented to compute flow down a periodic wall with large-amplitude corrugations or semi-circular depressions. In the case of a wavy wall, it is found that the shape of the film surface is described well by the linear perturbation expansion for small and moderate wave amplitudes. Streamline patterns reveal that, although the effect of the surfactant on the shape of the film surface is generally small, Marangoni tractions may have a profound influence on the kinematics by causing the onset of regions of recirculating flow.