Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 192, 135-143 (2011)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2011-01368-4

Regular Article

Large-scale Marangoni convection in a liquid layer with insoluble surfactant of low concentration

Department of Mathematics, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel

^a e-mail: amik@tx.technion.ac.il

Received: 21 January 2011
Revised: 25 January 2011
Published online: 9 March 2011

Abstract

We derive a system of amplitude equations describing the evolution of a large-scale Marangoni patterns in a liquid layer with poorly conducting boundaries in the presence of a small amount of an insoluble surfactant on the free flat interface. The presence of quadratic nonlinear terms in the amplitude equation leads to the selection of hexagonal patterns. The type of hexagons bifurcating into the subcritical region, depends on the parameters of the system.