Session KM: Instability: Richtmyer-Meshkov II and Rayleigh-Taylor
8:00 AM–10:10 AM, Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Salt Palace Convention Center Room: 251 A
Chair: Andrew Cook, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Abstract ID: BAPS.2007.DFD.KM.4
Abstract: KM.00004 : Rayleigh-Taylor instability experiments with precise and arbitrary control of the initial interface shape
8:39 AM–8:52 AM
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Abstract 
Authors:
Pierre Carles
(Universite Paris 6, Paris, France)
Zhibin Huang
(Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio)
Antonio De Luca
(Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio)
Timothy Atherton
(Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio)
Matthew Bird
(Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio)
Charles Rosenblatt
(Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio)
For a gravitationally-driven Rayleigh-Taylor instability, a dense fluid initially sits metastably atop a less dense fluid, a configuration that can be stabilized using a magnetic field gradient when one fluid is highly paramagnetic. On switching off the magnetic field, the instability occurs as the dense fluid falls under gravity. By affixing appropriately shaped magnetically-permeable materials to the outside of the cell, we impose arbitrarily-chosen, well-controlled, and jitter-free initial perturbations on the interface. This technique is used to examine both the linear and nonlinear regimes, including growth rates and nonlinear growth coefficients, as functions of the imposed perturbation wavelength and amplitude.
To cite this abstract, use the following reference: http://meetings.aps.org/link/BAPS.2007.DFD.KM.4