Stability of viscous film flow coating the interior of a vertical tube with a porous wall.

Abstract

The stability of the gravity-driven flow of a viscous film coating the inside of a tube with a porous wall is studied theoretically. We used Darcy's law to describe the motion of fluids in a porous medium. The Beaver-Joseph condition is used to describe the discontinuity of velocity at the porous-fluid interface. We derived an evolution equation for the film thickness using a long-wave approximation. The effect of velocity slip at the porous wall is identified by a parameter β. We examine the effect of β on the temporal stability, the absolute-convective instability (AI-CI), and the nonlinear evolution of the interface deformation. The results of the temporal stability reveal that the effect of velocity slip at the porous wall is destabilizing. The parameter β plays an important role in determining the AI-CI behavior and the nonlinear evolution of the interface. The presence of the porous wall promotes the absolute instability and the formation of the plug in the tube.