Stability of Axisymmetric Thermocapillary Flows in an Open Vertical Cylinder With Lateral Heating

Instability of Marangoni-Rayleigh-Be´nard convection of low Prandtl number fluid in an open vertical cylinder subjected to lateral heating is investigated using higher order finite difference scheme. Radiative boundary condition is applied to the free surface and bottom of the cylinder is adiabatic. The axisymmetric base flow is solved and then linear stability analysis is conducted to determine the critical points at which the flow becomes asymmetric. It is revealed that the Marangoni flow plays a stabilizing role to the Rayleigh-Be´nard convection.