Viscous effects on the non-classical Rayleigh–Taylor instability of spherical material interfaces

Abstract

The viscous and conductivity effects on the instability of a rapidly expanding material interface produced by a spherical shock tube are investigated through the employment of a high-order WENO scheme. The instability is influenced by various mechanisms, which include (a) classical Rayleigh–Taylor (RT) effects, (b) Bell–Plesset or geometry/curvature effects, (c) the effects of impulsively accelerating the interface, (d) compressibility effects, (e) finite thickness effects, and (f) viscous effects. Henceforth, the present instability studied is more appropriately referred to as non-classical RT instability to distinguish it from classical RT instability. The linear regime is examined and the development of the viscous three-dimensional perturbations is obtained by solving a one-dimensional system of partial differential equations. Numerical simulations are performed to illustrate the viscous effects on the growth of the disturbances for various conditions. The inviscid analysis does not show the existence of a maximum amplification rate. The present viscous analysis, however, shows that the growth rate increases with increasing the wave number, but there exists a peak wavenumber beyond which the growth rate decreases with increasing the wave number due to viscous effects.