View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-0456.vid
Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) occurs at the interface separating two fluids subjected to acceleration when the directions of the density gradient and the acceleration have opposite signs. Most of the previous scientific literature investigated the RTI under the incompressible assumption, while in many high density energy engineering applications and astrophysical phenomena such as inertial confinement fusion and supernova formations, the incompressible assumption may no longer be valid. In this study, the effects of the background iso-thermal stratification strength on multi-mode two-dimensional RTI are explored with fully compressible direct numerical simulations. It is shown that the increase in the flow compressibility through the strength of the background stratification suppresses the RTI growth and eventually, prevents the RTI mixing layer growth. In addition, the study compares the chaotic behavior within both the weakly and strongly stratified RTI mixing layers and two different Reynolds numbers for the strongly stratified case.
