We revisit the canonical Rayleigh-Taylor instability and investigate the case of a thin film of fluid upon the underside of an inclined plane. The presence of a natural flow along the plane competes with the conventional droplet forming instability. In particular, experiments reveal that no drops form for inclinations greater than a critical value. These features are rationalized in the context of the absolute/convective analysis conducted in this article.
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See supplementary material at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4927857 for details on the method used to determine the number of droplets dripping in our experiments.
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