• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.1196-1204
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• 2001

The rivulet is a narrow stream of liquid flowing down a solid surface. When the rivulet\`s flow rate exceeds a certain limit, it tends to meander exhibiting the instability of its interface. This analysis performs a perturbation analysis of this meandering rivulet assuming an inviscid flow possessing contact angle hysteresis at the contact line. The analysis reveals that the contact angle hysteresis as well as the velocity difference across the inter-face, strongly induces the instability of the liquid interface. Moreover, when the rivulet veto-city is low, it is predicted that the axisymmetric disturbance amplifies more rapidly than the anti-axisymmetric disturbance, which explains the emergence of the droplet flow at the low velocity regime.