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A unified theoretical model for spatiotemporal development of Rayleigh–Taylor and Richtmyer–Meshkov fingers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2022

Changwen Liu
Affiliation:
HEDPS, Center for Applied Physics and Technology, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China
Yousheng Zhang*
Affiliation:
HEDPS, Center for Applied Physics and Technology, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, Beijing 100094, PR China
Zuoli Xiao*
Affiliation:
HEDPS, Center for Applied Physics and Technology, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China Nanchang Innovation Institute, Peking University, Nanchang 330008, PR China
*
†Email addresses for correspondence: zhang_yousheng@iapcm.ac.cn, z.xiao@pku.edu.cn
†Email addresses for correspondence: zhang_yousheng@iapcm.ac.cn, z.xiao@pku.edu.cn

Abstract

An initially perturbed interface between two fluids of different densities is usually unstable when driven by an acceleration or a shock wave; it is known as a Rayleigh–Taylor instability or a Richtmyer–Meshkov instability. One of the most significant issues in these instabilities is the spatiotemporal development of fingers generated at the interface, which plays an important role in both scientific research (e.g. supernova explosion) and engineering applications (e.g. inertial confinement fusion). Accurate theoretical solution of these interfacial fingers remains as an unsolved and challenging problem since Taylor's seminal work more than seven decades ago. This paper reports a unified theory established for such phenomena by combining the classical potential-flow theory and a dual-source model to address the long-standing difficulty highlighted by the initial-value sensitivity and strong nonlinearity. It is the first time for a theory to accurately predict the long-time developments in both growth rate and shape curvature of interfacial fingers at all density ratios in two and three dimensions. Moreover, the new theory clearly reveals the nonlinear coupling mechanism for interfacial evolution, and especially explains the origin of overshot in the growth rate curve.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. (a) Schematics of the dual-source model. The finger is generated by the penetration of downstream fluid ${(\rho _{1})}$ into the upstream fluid ${(\rho _{2})}$. Two sources are separated by the finger with each being located at a distance ${a_{i}(t)}$ from the fingertip with an intensity ${Q_{i}(t)}$. Here ${\lambda _{i}}$ is the characteristic wavelength of the potential function ${\varphi _{i}}$. The red solid parabola is the middle finger approximated by LPM and the blue dashed parabolas are fingers neglected in LPM. The dashed lines with arrows are streamlines induced by the present model. (b) Streamlines of the flow field obtained from the present numerical simulation of RTI ($A=0.15$), which are overlaid on contours of densities.

Figure 1

Figure 2. The streamlines for flow induced by (a) pure sources (i.e. the hyperbolic part in (2.4)) and (b) source-uniform flow combination (dual-source singularities combined with a uniform stream, i.e. both the hyperbolic and exponential parts in (2.4)).The parameters are taken as $Q_{i}=1$, $k_{i}=1$ and $a_{i}=2(-1)^{i}$ for reference.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Evolutions of the RTI bubble velocity (a,b), corresponding curvature (c,d) and spike velocity (e,f) given by the dual-source model for 2-D case (red solid lines) in comparison with the numerical simulations (Sohn 2004) (blue dashed lines) and the theory by Goncharov (2002) (black dotted lines).

Figure 3

Figure 4. Evolutions of the RTI bubble and spike velocity (a,b) and bubble curvature (c,d) given by the dual-source model for the 3-D case (red solid and dashed lines) in comparison with the theory by Goncharov (2002) (black dotted lines).

Figure 4

Figure 5. (a,c) The RTI velocity and (b,d) bubble curvature at the quasisteady stage for all Atwood numbers in both 2-D and 3-D cases (red solid lines). The results from numerical simulations by (a,b) Sohn (2004) and (c,d) Ramaprabhu & Dimonte (2005) and Ramaprabhu et al. (2012) (blue solid circles) are included for comparison. The black dashed and short-dashed lines represent Goncharov's second-order and infinite-order theories, respectively.

Figure 5

Figure 6. Evolutions of the RMI velocity (a,c) and bubble curvature (b,d) for the 2-D cases. The red solid and dashed lines denote the results for bubble and spike, respectively, given by the dual-source model. The black dashed and dash–dotted lines represent the 2-D simulations (Zhang & Guo 2022) for bubble and spike. The blue open circles and crosses represent the 2-D simulations (Sohn 2004) for bubble and spike, respectively. The specific values of ${a _{1}^{0}}$ and ${g}$ are given in panels (a,c).

Figure 6

Figure 7. Evolutions of the RMI velocity (a,b) for the 3-D cases. The red solid and dashed lines denote the results for bubble and spike, respectively, given by the dual-source model. The blue open circles and crosses denote the 3-D experiment (Chapman & Jacobs 2006) and numerical simulation (Long et al.2009) for bubble and spike, respectively. The specific values of ${a _{1}^{0}}$ and ${g}$ are given in the figure.