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Three-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor instability Part 2. Experiment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2006

J. W. Jacobs  and
I. Catton
J. W. Jacobs
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA Present address: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125.
I. Catton
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA
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Abstract

Three-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor instability, induced by accelerating a small volume of water down a vertical tube using air pressure, is investigated. Two geometries are studied: a 15.875 cm circular tube and a 12.7 cm square tube. Runs were made with initial disturbances in the form of standing waves forced by shaking the test section in a lateral direction. Accelerations ranging from 5 to 10 times gravitational acceleration and wavenumbers from 1 cm−1 to 8 cm−1 are studied. The resulting instability was recorded and later analysed using high-speed motion picture photography. Measurements of the growth rate are found to agree well with linear theory. In addition, good qualitative agreement between photographs and three-dimensional surface plots of the weakly nonlinear solution of Part 1 of this series (Jacobs & Catton 1988) is obtained.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 187 , February 1988 , pp. 353 - 371
Copyright
© 1988 Cambridge University Press

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