Rayleigh-Plateau Instability of a Viscoelastic Layer Coated on a Rigid Cylindrical Fibre.

The Rayleigh-Plateau (RP) instability driven by the surface tension is observed in day to day life such as water jet from a tap breaks into droplets. Surface tension can play an important role in soft solid materials like gels, elastomers and biological tissues. We study the RP instability of a viscoelastic solid layer coated on a rigid cylindrical fibre. We solve the governing equation for the deformation of soft solid and obtain the dispersion relation. We present the results of how the RP instability depends on the elastocapillary length, the viscoelastic time scale, the rigid fibre radius and the substrate frictional coefficient.