A review of fluid instabilities and control strategies with applications in microgravity

Abstract

We give a brief review of several prominent fluid instabilities representing transitions driven by gravity, surface tension, thermal energy, and applied motion/acceleration. Strategies for controlling these instabilities, including their pattern formation properties, are discussed. The importance of gravity for many common fluid instabilities is emphasized and used to understand the sometimes dramatically different behavior of fluids in microgravity environments. This is illustrated in greater detail, using recent results, for the case of the frozen wave instability, which leads to large columnar structures in the absence of gravity. The development of these highly nonlinear states is often complex, but can be manipulated through an appropriate choice of forcing amplitude, container length and height, initial inclination of the surface, and other parameters affecting the nonlinear and inhomogeneous growth process. The increased opportunity for controlling fluids and their instabilities via small forcing or parameter changes in microgravity is noted.