Rarefaction-undercompressive fronts in driven films

We consider experiments by Ludviksson and Lightfoot [AIChE J. 17, 1166 (197 1)] on thin liquid films driven up a vertical plate by a thermally induced surface tension gradient with a counteracting gravitational force, and revi sit their theoretical analysis, which neglects the effects of curvature, fo r predicting the climbing rate of the front. We present a new theory for th e lubrication model with curvature effects, and get rising rates that depen d on the microscopic length scale at the contact line. The predictions are, in general, in better agreement with the experiment. (C) 1999 American Ins titute of Physics. [S1070-6631(99)01310-0].