Rayleigh-Taylor Instability in Elastic-Plastic Materials

Journal Article · Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 EST 1998 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.1212· OSTI ID:568348

Dimonte, G; Schneider, M ^[1]; Gore, R ^[2]

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1. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94551 (United States)
2. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545 (United States)

The Rayleigh-Taylor instability is investigated in a material with a shear modulus {mu} and yield stress {sigma}{sub 0} . Incompressible experiments are conducted with constant and impulsive acceleration histories g(t) using a fully characterized material. Two dimensional (2D) perturbations are found to be stabilized for wave number k{gt}{rho}g/2{mu} and initial amplitude h{sub 0}{lt}{sigma}{sub 0}/{rho}g , where {rho} is the density. The stability region is larger for 3D perturbations. Unstable modes are found to grow classically during the acceleration phase, but they can recover elastically while coasting. {copyright} {ital 1998} {ital The American Physical Society }

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36; W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 568348
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Vol. 80, Issue 6; Other Information: PBD: Feb 1998
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

66 PHYSICS
RAYLEIGH-TAYLOR INSTABILITY
PLASTICITY
ELASTICITY
SHEAR
ACCELERATION
MATERIALS
DENSITY