Production of reproducible Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities

Abstract

A device is described that excites individual modes of the standing wave spectrum for surface waves on water in a water tank of rectangular cross section. By synchronizing the downward acceleration of the tank with the standing wave on the water, Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities with reproducible characteristics are excited at the air-water interface. By controlling the width of the tank, the fluid motion is made to be largely two dimensional. The reproducibility of the phenomenon and the two-dimensional character of the flow make it possible, for the first time, to compare details of the wave profile with results predicted with the two-dimensional models of Emmons, Chang, and Watson.

On the Rayleigh–Taylor instability for confined liquid films with injection through the bounding surfaces

“…Experiments on the RT instability were performed by, among others, Lewis [18], Duff et al [19], and Popil and Curzon [20]. Lewis [18], who studied the RT instability created by imposing a pressure difference across a column of water, concluded that the instability could be divided into three stages: (1) an initial stage characterized by an exponential increase in the amplitude of the interfacial waves, (2) a transition stage that includes the formation of ''mushrooms'' of air that start to penetrate into the liquid, and (3) a final stage where spikes of air penetrate the liquid at a uniform velocity that scales with the square root of the gravitational acceleration.…”

Statistically steady measurements of Rayleigh-Taylor mixing in a gas channel

“…However, majority of the experiments described above (Cole & Tankin 1973;Emmons et al 1960;Ratafia 1973) used a vibrating paddle for generating the initial perturbations which resulted in generation of a wide spectrum of modes instead of a single eigenmode (Popil & Curzon 1979). The phase of such modes and their amplitudes were variable and thus, the experiments were not repeatable.…”

“…The phase of such modes and their amplitudes were variable and thus, the experiments were not repeatable. Popil and Curzon (1979) used a electrostatic generator to accurately generate single-mod …”

Experimental characterization of initial conditions and spatio-temporal evolution of a small-Atwood-number Rayleigh–Taylor mixing layer

“…They obtained an approximate single-mode perturbation at the density interface by oscillating a paddle, and measured the growth of individual bubbles and spikes using high-speed photography. Other researchers have also used some type of accelerated tank containing miscible or immiscible fluids of different densities to investigate the growth of Rayleigh-Taylor instability-driven mixing layers (Ratafia 1973;Cole & Tankin 1973;Popil & Curzon 1979;Read 1984;Jacobs & Catton 1988;Kucherenko et al 1994Kucherenko et al , 1997Kucherenko et al , 2003aDimonte & Schneider 1996, Dimonte 1999Wilkinson 2004).…”

“…Some experiments imposed an approximate sinusoidal perturbation at the two-fluid interface and primarily used ordinary photographic techniques to measure the growth of individual bubbles and spikes (Ratafia 1973;Cole & Tankin 1973;Popil & Curzon 1979;Jacobs & Catton 1988;Wilkinson 2004). In addition to the measurement of the mixing layer width, Wilkinson (2004) used planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) to measure the growth and internal structure of the single-mode, three-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor instability.…”