Effect of Mach number on Richtmyer-Meshkov mixing and transition
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Indian Institure of Technology Bombay (India)
The Richtmyer-Meshkov (R-M) instability is an important process that governs fluid mixing in engineering applications where shock waves are present. As the instability grows in time, the flow may eventually transition to a turbulent state with a broad range of relevant length scales and complicated flow features on a very short time scale, making it a challenging problem to investigate both experimentally and numerically. Experiments are performed to study the effect of incident shock Mach number (M) on the development of the R-M instability after a shock wave impulsively accelerates a varicose-perturbed, heavy-gas curtain (air-SF6-air). The resulting instability and subsequent fluid mixing is measured using simultaneous Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence (PLIF) and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The implementation of both of these diagnostics is particularly important for the study of variable density flows in which the scalar mixing state actively modulates the flow dynamics. Turbulence in variable density flows is therefore more complicated, and our understanding is limited compared to more classical turbulence problems.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1129825
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR--14-22884
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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