Dripping from curved ceilings

(Trinh et al., 2014)

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of surface roughness on the formation of droplets and rivulets under a curved ceiling coated by a liquid film.
When a heavier fluid lies on a lighter one, as it is the case for condensed water under a lid for example, the interface is unstable. It has been recently discovered that this instability, called the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, can be stabilized if the substrate is curved (Trinh et al., 2014). However, equally spaced rivulets can still appear.
With this project we would like to better understand the effect of the surface non-uniformity on the origin of dripping droplets and rivulets by performing experiments. We believe in fact that depending on the amplitude and type of the perturbations, one pattern or the other can be enhanced.

Supervisor: Gioele Balestra