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Title: Compressible Rayleigh-Taylor instability of supersonic accelerated surfaces

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5470758

The compressible Rayleigh-Taylor instability of a supersonic accelerated contact discontinuity between two gases is studied by numerically solving the two-dimensional Euler equations. The computed solutions exhibit a complicated set of nonlinear waves comprised of spike and bubble bow shocks, terminal shocks within the spike and bubble, Kelvin-Helmholtz rollup of the spike tip, and contact surface waves. The spike appears to attain a finite growth of aspect ratio approximately equal to 2. The propagation of a supersonic slab jet is also studied numerically, in order to compare and contrast the jet wave structure with that of the supersonic accelerated surface. 13 refs., 10 figs.

Research Organization:
New York Univ., NY (USA). Courant Mathematics and Computing Lab.
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-76ER03077
OSTI ID:
5470758
Report Number(s):
DOE/ER/03077-264; ON: DE85016185
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English