Abstract
We report an experimental study of the primary bifurcation in electrically driven convection in a freely suspended film. A weakly conducting, submicron thick smectic liquid crystal film was supported by concentric circular electrodes. It electroconvected when a sufficiently large voltage V was applied between its inner and outer edges. The film could sustain rapid flows and yet remain strictly two dimensional. By rotation of the inner electrode, a circular Couette shear could be independently imposed. The control parameters were a dimensionless number analogous to the Rayleigh number, which is and the Reynolds number Re of the azimuthal shear flow. The geometrical and material properties of the film were characterized by the radius ratio and a dimensionless number P, analogous to the Prandtl number. Using measurements of current-voltage characteristics of a large number of films, we examined the onset of electroconvection over a broad range of P, and Re. We compared this data quantitatively to the results of linear stability theory. This could be done with essentially no adjustable parameters. The current-voltage data above onset were then used to infer the amplitude of electroconvection in the weakly nonlinear regime by fitting them to a steady-state amplitude equation of the Landau form. We show how the primary bifurcation can be tuned between supercritical and subcritical by changing and Re.
- Received 18 January 2001
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.64.036212
©2001 American Physical Society