The steady and unifrom flow of a viscous fluid past a unifrom cavity in a gemoetry with small, yet arbitrary, film thickness is considered. A mathematical model for describing steady perturbations to such a flow is presented in which the perturbation to the cavity-fluid interface is represented by a small amplitude harmonic wave of wavenumber n. A linearized perturbation analysis then permits the formulation of a boundary-value problem involving the homogeneous Reynolds equation, the solution to which determines both n and the perturbed pressure field.

Numerical and approximate analytic solutions are determined for the cylinderplane geometry in which fluid flows between a rotating cylinder and a Perspex block. Whilst these compare well with experimental data over the whole range \[ 0.1 < \eta U/T < 3, \] closest agreement between theory and experiment is attained for small values of both ηU/T and n.