Dust Dynamics in Kelvin-Helmholtz Instabilities

Abstract

The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI) is a fluid instability which arises when two contacting flows have different tangential velocities. As shearing flows are very common in all sorts of (astro)physical fluid setups, the KHI is frequently encountered. In many astrophysical fluids the gas fluid in loaded with additional dust particles. Here we study the influence of these dust particles on the initiation of the KHI, as well as the effect the KHI has on the density distribution of dust species in a range of different particle sizes. This redistribution by the instability is of importance in the formation of dust structures in astrophysical fluids. To study the effect of dust on the linear and nonlinear phase of the KHI, we use the multi-fluid dust + gas module of the MPI-AMRVAC [1] code to perform 2D and 3D simulations of KHI in setups with physical quantities relevant to astrophysical fluids. A clear dependency on dust sizes is seen, with larger dust particles displaying significantly more clumping than smaller ones.