Single- and dual-mode Rayleigh–Taylor instability at microscopic scale

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The microscopic Rayleigh–Taylor instability (RTI) is studied via molecular dynamics (MD) simulation for single- and dual-mode interfaces under a strong acceleration. The growth behavior of microscopic RTI as well as the underlying regime exhibits considerable differences from the macroscopic counterpart. At a microscopic scale, the flow Reynolds number is very low and thus viscosity effect plays an important role, namely, it suppresses the growth of overall perturbation amplitude and also damps the growth of harmonics. As a result, the microscopic RTI presents a much weaker nonlinearity. Also, the motion of atoms produces random fluctuations to the evolving interface, which cause the detachment of droplets from the spike under the action of surface tension at late stages. In addition, the mode coupling behavior in dual-mode RTI at a microscopic scale is evidently different from the macroscopic counterpart, and a new prescription dominating the growth of each mode is proposed. Based on these findings, a semi-empirical model applicable to the microscopic RTI from early to late stages is developed, which gives a satisfactory prediction of the MD results.