This paper is concerned with the stability of periodic wave trains in a generalized Kuramoto-Sivashinski (gKS) equation. This equation is useful to describe the weak instability of low frequency perturbations for thin film flows down an inclined ramp. We provide a set of equations, namely Whithams modulation equations, that determines the behaviour of low frequency perturbations of periodic wave trains. As a byproduct, we relate the spectral stability in the small wavenumber regime to properties of the modulation equations. This stability is always critical since 0 is a 0-Floquet number eigenvalue associated to translational invariance.
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