Numerical study of Richtmyer-Meshkov instability in finite thickness fluid layers with reshock.

Abstract

The evolution of a shock-induced fluid layer is numerically investigated in order to reveal the underlying mechanism of the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability under the effect of a reshock wave. Six different types of fluid layer are initially set up to study the effect of amplitude perturbation, fluid-layer thickness, and phase position on the reshocked fluid-layer evolution. Interface morphology results show that the interface-coupling effect gets strengthened when the fluid-layer thickness is small, which means the development of spikes and bubbles is inhibited to some extent compared to the case with large initial fluid-layer thickness. Two jets emerge on interface II_{1} under out-of-phase conditions, while bubbles are generated on interface II_{1} when the initial phase position is in-phase. The mixing width of the fluid layer experiences an early linear growth stage and a late nonlinear stage, between which the growth of the mixing width is considerably inhibited by the passage of the first and the second reshock and mildly weakened during phase reversion. The amplitude growth of interfaces agrees well with the theoretical model prediction, including both the linear and nonlinear stages. In the very late stage, the amplitude perturbation growth tends to differ from the theoretical prediction due to the squeezing effect and stretching effect.