# Snaking of a fluid in two dimensions

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## Abstract

The nature of physical processes can depend substantially on the dimensionality of a system. One such example are buckling instabilities, which arise from the competition between axial compression and bending in elastic filaments. Thus, coiling of a jet of viscous fluid falling on a substrate (honey poured on a toast)  behaves quite differently from the coiling of viscous sheets (volcanous lava sliding on a crust) . Here we consider a novel effect of coiling of a fluid jet confined to a two dimensional film.

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While coiling in three dimensions is easy to observe by pouring of a viscous fluid on a substrate , a two dimensional analog of this process is not that straightforward as viscous sheets are usually unstable toward fluctuations leading to a breakup of a sheet. In our experiment we use a soap film stretched on a frame and a soap jet falling from the top of a frame thus confined to a two dimensional surface of a film Fig. 1. We derive and check a scaling law that connects the filament radius $`r`$ to a coil size $`L`$.

If the coiling frequency is low enough so that effects of inertia are unimportant $`\omega (\frac{g}{L})^{\frac{1}{2}}`$, the coiling instability is determined by the competition between a torque exerted by the gravitational force and a torque due to the bending of a filament. Assuming that the Young’s modulus of soap is $`E`$ a torque due to the bending of an elastic filament with radius $`r`$ and curvature $`L`$ will be proportional to $`E\frac{r^4}{L}`$. A torque due to the gravitational force is $`\rho gr^2L^2`$, where $`\rho `$ is the density of soap. Equating both torques gives

$$L(\frac{E}{\rho g})^{\frac{1}{3}}r^{\frac{2}{3}}$$
(1)   
which is a well known result for an elastic rod models .

We studied coiling of liquid soap flowing from the top of a metal frame on which the soap film was stretched. Coiling was observed at the bottom of the frame for different frame heights thus establishing a dependence of coil size $`L`$ on a filament radius $`r`$. A camera with a 20 fold zoom was used to measure a filament radius and a coil width with an accuracy of $`5\%`$. The data was taken in a regime where the radius of the filament was at least five times smaller than a coil size and a frequency was small enough to be detected within an accuracy of $`10\%`$ using a standard camera frame frequency. The data in Fig. 2 collapses to the scaling law $`Lr^{0.62\pm 0.04}`$ and agrees well with the theoretically predicted scaling.

While such relatively unimportant effects as air drag, non-Newtonian effects and relaxation of a viscous flow have been neglected it is surprising to find that the effects due to the viscosity and surface tension do not modify scaling law (1) derived essentially for an elastic rod model. Apparently because the thickness of a film is much smaller then the radius of a filament and an interface relaxation time due to the low surface tension is high, surface tension and viscosity do not modify elastic rod like scaling laws at low frequencies.