LXIX. Correspondence. Wave motions on a free oil surface

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Abstract
In 1954 I published an account of some experiments where air was blown over lubricating oil in a wind tunnel (Francis 1954). At a certain critical windspeed tiny ripples were seen on the surface, and some of them rapidly grew and accelerated down-wind. The appearance of the phenomenon and the windspeed at which it occurred corresponded closely with the instability of surface waves forecasted by Kelvin and Helmholtz (quoted by Lamb 1932) but which does not appear on a water surface such as the sea. The experiments were done on one oil only, Shell S2883, and its viscosity μ (2·2 poise) was such that the other type of instability (Jeffreys 1925) should have occurred at a windspeed only just higher than the critical windspeed actually found. There may therefore be a possibility that the phenomenon was fortuitous and was not really due to the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability. However, some additional experiments with still more viscous fluids seem to confirm the earlier results.

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