Stationary solutal Marangoni instability in a two-layer system

The effect of different mass transfer mechanisms on the Marangoni instability in a two-layer system of finite width is studied. A dilute soluble surfactant is transferred across the interface between two immiscible fluid phases. A linear stability analysis is developed, and the corresponding eigenvalue problem is solved analytically for the onset of monotonic instability. Mass transfer is assumed to be controlled by bulk diffusion or/and by the adsorption-desorption mechanism. The influences of the diffusivity ratio and the layer width ratio on the instability of the system are examined. (C) 1998 Academic Press.