The instability of water-mud interface in viscous two-layer flow with large viscosity contrast

Abstract

The temporal instability of parallel viscous two-phase mixing layers is extended to current-fluid mud by considering a composite error function velocity profile. The influence of viscosity ratio, Reynolds number, and Froude number on the instability of the system are discussed and a new phenomenon never discussed is investigated based on our numerical results. It is shown that viscosity can enlarge the unstable wave number range, cause new instability modes, and certainly reduce the growth rate of Kelvin—Helmholtz (K—H) instability.