Steady-state conditions of a nonisothermal film with a heat-insulated free boundary

The equilibrium shapes of a nonisothermal liquid film with a heat-insulated free surface for large Marangoni numbers are investigated in the long-wave approximation using a combination of analytical and numerical methods. It is proved that the two-dimensional problem of the equilibrium of a strip-shaped film has a steady-state solution for an arbitrary large temperature gradient on the boundaries of the strip. An increase in this gradient leads to an abrupt thinning of the film near the heated boundary, which can result in instability and rupture of the film. In the equilibrium problem for a film fixed on a circular contour, the nonuniform distribution of the heat flux on the contour was found to have a significant influence on the free-surface shape. __________ Translated from Prikladnaya Mekhanika i Tekhnicheskaya Fizika, Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 59–73, July–August, 2008.