Snaking of a fluid in two dimensions

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) \cite{maha1,griffiths} behaves quite differently from the coiling of viscous sheets (volcanous lava sliding on a crust) \cite{johnson,ramberg}. Here we consider a novel effect of coiling of a fluid jet confined to a two dimensional film.