The application of front tracking to the simulation of shock refractions and shock accelerated interface mixing

The mixing behavior of two or more fluids plays an important role in a number of physical processes and technological applications. The authors consider two basic types of mechanical (i.e., non-diffusive) fluid mixing. If a heavy fluid is suspended above a lighter fluid in the presence of a gravitational field, small perturbations at the fluid interface will grow. This process is known as the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. One can visualize this instability in terms of bubbles of the light fluid rising into the heavy fluid, and fingers (spikes) of the heavy fluid falling into the light fluid. A similar process, called the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability occurs when an interface is accelerated by a shock wave. These instabilities have several common features. Indeed, Richtmyer`s approach to understanding the shock induced instability was to view that process as resulting from an acceleration of the two fluids by a strong gravitational field acting for a short time. Here, the authors report new results on the Rayleigh-Taylor and Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities. Highlights include calculations of Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities in curved geometries without grid orientation effects, improved agreement between computations and experiments in the case of Richtmyer-Meshkov instabilities at a plane interface, and a demonstration of an increase in the Rayleigh-Taylor mixing layer growth rate with increasing compressibility, along with a loss of universality of this growth rate. The principal computational tool used in obtaining these results was a code based on the front tracking method.