• ELECTROHYDRODYNAMIC RAYLEIGH-TAYLOR INSTABILITY IN A NON-NEWTONIAN FLUID

Abstract

With the growing importance of non-Newtonian fluids in modern technology and industries, investigations on such fluids are desirable. In the present paper is to study the Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) in a thin layer of an incompressible non-Newtonian fluid, assuming it obeys power law, confined above by a interface with a heavier  fluid, and below by an impermeable rigid boundary subject to linear stability analysis. The formulation developed in the present work is to evaluate the influence of the effects of non-Newtonian fluid, surface tension and the layer thickness on the RTI using the approximations described by Rudraiah et al., (1996). These approximations simplify the power-law equation and pave the way to find analytical solution for velocity distribution which will be used in the dispersion relation obtained using suitable boundary and interface conditions.