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Richtmyer–Meshkov instability growth: experiment, simulation and theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 1999

RICHARD L. HOLMES
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
GUY DIMONTE
Affiliation:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551, USA
BRUCE FRYXELL
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA and Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
MICHAEL L. GITTINGS
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA Science Applications International Corporation, San Diego, CA 92121, USA
JOHN W. GROVE
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, University at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3600, USA
MARILYN SCHNEIDER
Affiliation:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551, USA
DAVID H. SHARP
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
ALEXANDER L. VELIKOVICH
Affiliation:
Berkeley Research Associates, PO Box 852, Springfield, VA 22510-0852, USA
ROBERT P. WEAVER
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
QIANG ZHANG
Affiliation:
Science Applications International Corporation, San Diego, CA 92121, USA

Abstract

Richtmyer–Meshkov instability is investigated for negative Atwood number and two-dimensional sinusoidal perturbations by comparing experiments, numerical simulations and analytic theories. The experiments were conducted on the NOVA laser with strong radiatively driven shocks with Mach numbers greater than 10. Three different hydrodynamics codes (RAGE, PROMETHEUS and FronTier) reproduce the amplitude evolution and the gross features in the experiment while the fine-scale features differ in the different numerical techniques. Linearized theories correctly calculate the growth rates at small amplitude and early time, but fail at large amplitude and late time. A nonlinear theory using asymptotic matching between the linear theory and a potential flow model shows much better agreement with the late-time and large-amplitude growth rates found in the experiments and simulations. We vary the incident shock strength and initial perturbation amplitude to study the behaviour of the simulations and theory and to study the effects of compression and nonlinearity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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