The nonlinear saturation amplitude (NSA) of the fundamental mode in the classical Rayleigh-Taylor instability with a cylindrical geometry for an arbitrary Atwood number is analytically investigated by considering the nonlinear corrections up to the third order. The analytic results indicate that the effects of the initial radius of the interface (r 0 ) and the Atwood number (A) play an important role in the NSA of the fundamental mode. The NSA of the fundamental mode first increases gently and then decreases quickly with increasing A. For a given A, the smaller the r 0 /λ (λ is the perturbation wavelength), the larger the NSA of the fundamental mode. When r 0 /λ is large enough (r 0 λ ), the NSA of the fundamental mode is reduced to the prediction in the previous literatures within the framework of the third-order perturbation theory.

The classical planar Richtmyer–Meshkov instability (RMI) at a fluid interface supported by a constant pressure is investigated by a formal perturbation expansion up to the third order, and then according to definition of nonlinear saturation amplitude (NSA) in Rayleigh–Taylor instability (RTI), the NSA in planar RMI is obtained explicitly. It is found that the NSA in planar RMI is affected by the initial perturbation wavelength and the initial amplitude of the interface, while the effect of the initial amplitude of the interface on the NSA is less than that of the initial perturbation wavelength. Without marginal influence of the initial amplitude, the NSA increases linearly with wavelength. The NSA normalized by the wavelength in planar RMI is about 0.11, larger than that corresponding to RTI.

No abstract