Abstract
The gravitational spreading of a liquid with temperature-dependent viscosity is investigated. The aspect ratio of the layer of fluid is taken to be small, thus allowing significant simplifications to the equations governing the thermal and flow problems. The resulting equations are coupled through a dependency of the viscosity on temperature, three specific forms of which are considered. When the coupling is sufficiently strong, the flow is markedly different from the isothermal case and physically significant features seen in practice, such as a central plateau in the spreading profile, result.
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Sansom, A., King, J.R. & Riley, D.S. Degenerate-diffusion models for the spreading of thin non-isothermal gravity currents. Journal of Engineering Mathematics 48, 43–68 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:ENGI.0000009512.73393.54
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:ENGI.0000009512.73393.54