Electrorheological Rayleigh-Taylor instability at the interface between a porous layer and thin shell with poorly conducting couple stress fluid

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the study of the Electrorheological Rayleigh-Taylor instability (ERTI) at the interface between a densely packed saturated poorly conducting couple stress porous layer accelerated by a lighter poorly conducting couple stress fluid in a thin shell in the presence of a transverse electric field and laser radiation. A simple theory based on fully developed flow approximations is used to derive the dispersion relation for the growth rate of ERTI. The cutoff and the maximum wave numbers and the corresponding maximum frequencies are obtained. It is shown that the effects of couple stress parameter and the electric field reduce the growth rate considerably compared to a non-conducting fluid in the absence of an electric field. These are favorable to control the surface instabilities in many practical applications discussed in this paper.