Numerical Study for the Three-Dimensional Rayleigh–Taylor Instability through the TVD/AC Scheme and Parallel Computation

Abstract

The Rayleigh–Taylor instability is a gravity driven instability of a contact surface between fluids of different densities. The growth of this instability is sensitive to numerical or physical mass diffusion. For this reason, high resolution of the contact discontinuity is particularly important. In this paper, we address this problem using a second-order TVD finite difference scheme with artificial compression. We describe our numerical simulations of the 3D Rayleigh–Taylor instability using this scheme. The numerical solutions are compared to (a) the exact 2D solution in the linear regime and (b) numerical solutions using the TVD scheme and the front tracking method. The computational program is used to study the evolution of a single bubble and 3D bubble merger, i.e., the nonlinear evolution of a single mode and the process of nonlinear mode–mode interaction.