Dissolution instability and roughening transition

Abstract

We theoretically investigate the pattern formation observed when a fluid flows over a solid substrate that can dissolve or melt. We use a turbulent mixing description that includes the effect of the bed roughness. We show that the dissolution instability at the origin of the pattern is associated with an anomaly at the transition from a laminar to a turbulent hydrodynamic response with respect to the bed elevation. This anomaly, and therefore the instability, disappears when the bed becomes hydrodynamically rough, above a threshold roughness-based Reynolds number. This suggests a possible mechanism for the selection of the pattern amplitude. The most unstable wavelength scales as observed in nature on the thickness of the viscous sublayer, with a multiplicative factor that depends on the dimensionless parameters of the problem.