Surface Instability of Thermodynamically Non-equilibrium Liquid Metal in Electric Field

The mathematical theory of stability requires the analysis of the time evolution of arbitrary perturbations of the initial conditions in the system. However, in real systems arbitrary perturbations are possible only in thermodynamically non-equilibrium states. This paper deals with the surface stability of the liquid metal in electric field. The paper proposes the relevant theory, which differs from the Larmor–Tonks–Frenkel instability and experimentally confirmed by Serkov, et al. It is shown that the introduction of the dependence between the surface tension and curvature in the Larmor–Tonks–Frenkel instability changes the critical electric intensity by not over 5%. It is found that as a result of the Larmor–Tonks–Frenkel instability, the dependence between the critical electric intensity and the liquid metal temperature is (1 – T/T0)1/3, whereas in the proposed theory, this dependence is not observed.