Stability analysis of the thin power law liquid film flowing down on a vertical cylinder

The paper investigates the stability theory of a thin power law liquid film flowing down along the outside surface of a vertical cylinder., The long-wave perturbation method is employed to solve for generalized linear kinematic equations with free film interface. The normal mode approach is used to compute the stability solution for the film flow. The degree of instability in the film flow is further intensified by the lateral curvature of cylinder. This is somewhat different from that of the planar flow. The analysis results also indicate that by increasing the flow index and increasing the radius of the cylinder the film flow can become relatively more stable as traveling down along the vertical cylinder.