Experiments conducted on the EKAP facility at the Russian Federal Nuclear Center-VNIITF concerning the stabilization of Rayleigh-Taylor instability-induced mixing in miscible liquids by the formation of a molecular diffusion~or transitional! layer between the liquids initially were described. The experiments had an Atwood number of 103. The acceleration was 3500 times that of Earth's gravity, and several values of diffusion layer thickness were considered. The experiments showed that the growth of the turbulent mixing zone could be delayed by adjusting the amplitude of the initial perturbations and the characteristic thickness of the diffusion layer. This has been observed in experiments conducted with water and mercury. The mixing layer evolution was imaged using X-ray radiography.

Behavior of the turbulized mixtures at the stage of their inertial motion (with removed acceleration) has been studied. Turbulized mixtures were obtained at the contact boundary of two different density fluids as a result of the Rayleigh–Taylor instability (RTI) development. At some instant of time t*, the acceleration sign was changed and conditions for the mixture separation were created. Then at the instant of time t**, the acceleration was removed and the turbulized mixture continued to move under force of inertia. Experiments have been performed at the installations EKAP and SOM. At the stage of inertial motion, the average density distribution of substance in the mixture region and the width of the turbulized mixture region have been obtained. The data on the mixture region expansion at the stage of inertial motion have been obtained as well.