A planar liquid layer is bounded below by a rigid plate and above by an interface with a passive gas. A steady shear flow is set up by imposing a temperature gradient along the layer and driving the motion by thermocapillarity. This dynamic state is susceptible to two types of thermal-convective instabilities: (i) stationary longitudinal rolls, which involve the classical Marangoni instability studied by Pearson; and (ii) unsteady hydrothermal waves, which involve a new mechanism of instability deriving its energy from the horizontal temperature gradients. Thermal stability characteristics for liquid layers with and without return-flow profiles are presented as functions of the Prandtl number of the liquid and the Biot number of the interface. Comparisons are made with available experimental observations.

A planar liquid layer is bounded below by a rigid plate and above by an interface with a passive gas. A steady shear flow is set up by imposing a temperature gradient along the layer and driving the motion by thermocapillarity. This dynamic state is susceptible to surface-wave instabilities that couple the interfacial deflection to the underlying shear flow. These instabilities are found to be directly related to the two-dimensional waves on an isothermal layer subject to wind shear as described by Miles and by Smith & Davis. Hence the surface-tension gradients are important only in that they drive the basic shear flow. The surface-wave stability characteristics for liquid layers with and without return-flow profiles are presented, and special attention is paid to long-wave instabilities. Comparisons are made with available experimental observations.

A physical mechanism for the long-wave instability of thin liquid films is presented. We show that the many diverse systems that exhibit this instability can be classified into two large groups. Each group is studied using the model of a thin liquid film with a deformable top surface flowing down a rigid inclined plane. In the first group, the top surface has an imposed stress, while in the other, an imposed velocity. The proposed mechanism shows how the details of the energy transfer from the basic state to the disturbance are handled differently in each of these cases, and how a common growth mechanism produces the unstable motion of the disturbance.