Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor instability

Scase, Matthew M.; Baldwin, Kyle A.; Hill, Richard J.A.

Abstract

© 2017 American Physical Society. The effect of rotation upon the classical Rayleigh-Taylor instability is investigated. We consider a two-layer system with an axis of rotation that is perpendicular to the interface between the layers. In general, we find that a wave mode's growth rate may be reduced by rotation. We further show that in some cases, unstable axisymmetric wave modes may be stabilized by rotating the system above a critical rotation rate associated with the mode's wavelength, the Atwood number, and the flow's aspect ratio.

Citation

Scase, M. M., Baldwin, K. A., & Hill, R. J. (2017). Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor instability. Physical Review Fluids, 2(2), Article 024801. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.2.024801

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 12, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Feb 15, 2017
• Publication Date: Feb 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jan 13, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 1, 2017
• Journal: Physical Review Fluids
• Electronic ISSN: 2469-990X
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 2
• Article Number: 024801
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.2.024801
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/845779
• Publisher URL: https://journals.aps.org/prfluids/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.2.024801