Plateau-Rayleigh Instability in Water Stream

​
R
0
k
When water pours from a faucet, instead of keeping a cylindrical flow, the fluid tends to break into drops due to surface tension; Joseph Plateau studied this phenomenon, and it was explained theoretically by Rayleigh.

Details

In the simplest approximation, the radius of the stream along the
z
axis at an intermediate stage before breaking into drops is given by
r(z)=
R
0
+
A
k
cos(kz)
,
where
R
0
is the radius of the strand,
k
is the wave number, and the
A
k
are the amplitudes of the perturbations.

References

[1] Wikipedia. "Plateau–Rayleigh Instability." (Apr 28, 2014) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plateau% E2 %80 %93 Rayleigh_instability.
[2] V. Y. Chen. Surface Tension: Plateau Rayleigh Instability[Video]. (Apr 28, 2014) www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml4KEy4N0gc.
[3] U. Miyamoto, "Curvature Driven Diffusion, Rayleigh–Plateau, and Gregory–Laflamme." arxiv.org/pdf/0804.1723v2.pdf.

External Links

Wavenumber (ScienceWorld)
Surface Tension (ScienceWorld)

Permanent Citation

Enrique Zeleny
​
​"Plateau-Rayleigh Instability in Water Stream"​
​http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/PlateauRayleighInstabilityInWaterStream/​
​Wolfram Demonstrations Project​
​Published: April 30, 2014