AbstractThe stability of the plane interface separating two Rivlin-Ericksen elastico-viscous superposed fluids of uniform densities when the whole system is immersed in a uniform horizontal magnetic field has been studied. The stability analysis has been carried out, for mathematical simplicity, for two highly viscous fluids of equal kinematic viscosities and equal kinematic viscoelasticities. It is found that the stability criterion is independent of the effects of viscosity and

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... and is dependent on the orientation and magnitude of the magnetic field. The magnetic field is found to stabilize a certain wave-number range of the unstable configuration. The behaviour of growth rates with respect to kinematic viscosity and kinematic viscoelasticity parameters are examined numerically.