Surface instability of a dielectric fluid in an electric field

Extract

This paper is a sequel to a recent paper (1) in which the author discussed gravity waves on a horizontal layer of conducting fluid with a normal electrostatic field at the free surface. In this work results are given for waves in an incompressible dielectric fluid, in a similar configuration. Treating the dielectric as an inviscid fluid the stability of the system is first described in terms of the changes in potential energy in a small static displacement. The result so obtained is then confirmed by a normal mode analysis in which a dispersion relation is obtained for the inviscid model. The paper gives finally a discussion of the results for a viscous dielectric fluid, the main point of which is that, as in (1), in the transition from stable to unstable disturbances viscosity plays no part, and that the stability characteristics are the same as those for an inviscid dielectric fluid.