Steady parallel flow in an evaporating fluid heated from sidewalls

Evaporation is ubiquitous in nature, but very few attempts have been made in the past to couple the effects of evaporation with fluid flow behavior. In this theoretical paper we have discussed the effects of evaporation on the dynamics of steady state thermocapillary convection in a two-dimensional rectangular container. The liquid is heated by differentially heated sidewalls and mass loss from the interface due to evaporation is compensated by the liquid entering into the container through a lower inlet, thus keeping the thickness of the liquid layer constant. We show that for an evaporating liquid one can obtain a plane parallel base state profile which depends on the evaporative mass flux. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.