Numerical simulations of compressible Rayleigh–Taylor turbulence in stratified fluids

Abstract

We present the results of our numerical simulations of the Rayleigh–Taylor turbulence, performed using a recently proposed (Sbragaglia et al 2009 J. Fluid Mech. 628 299, Scagliarini et al 2010 Phys. Fluids 22 055101) lattice Boltzmann method that can describe consistently a thermal compressible flow subjected to an external forcing. The method allowed us to study the system in both the nearly Boussinesq regime and the strongly compressible regime. Moreover, we show that when the stratification is important, the presence of the adiabatic gradient causes the arrest of the mixing process.