Dynamics of fluid film on a granular chain

A liquid film flowing down on a cylindrical fiber becomes unstable forming bead like structures. These structures travel along the axis of the fibre. The size and morphology of the beads depend on the geometry of the fiber, film liquid properties such as viscosity and density of the fluid, film flow rate, fiber diameter and surface tension coefficient of the liquid. We perform detailed numerical simulations of the above system to study the effect of the geometry of the fiber and show that the well-spaced beads observed for the flat fiber undergo merging changing the instability length and propagation time scales.