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On the Kolmogorov inertial subrange developing from Richtmyer-Meshkov instability

V.K. Tritschler, S. Hickel, X.Y. Hu, N.A. Adams (2013)  
Physics of Fluids 25: 071701. doi: 10.1063/1.4813608

We present results of well-resolved direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the turbulent flowevolving from Richtmyer-Meshkov instability (RMI) in a shock-tube with square cross section. The RMI occurs at the interface between a mixture of O2 and N2 (light gas) and SF6 and acetone (heavy gas).

The interface between the light and heavy gas is accelerated by a Ma = 1.5 planar shock wave. RMI is triggered by a well-defined multimodal initial disturbance at the interface. The DNS exhibit grid-resolution independent statistical quantities and support the existence of a Kolmogorov-like inertial range with a k−5/3 scaling unlike previous simulations found in the literature. The results are in excellent agreement with the experimental data of Weber et al. (2012). 

 

Contour plots of SF6 mass fraction on the medium (a) and the fine-resolution grid (b).

 

Radial power spectrum of the density and radial spectrum of the total kinetic energy averaged in the longitudinal (shock propagating) flow direction compared to the experiment of Weber et al. (2012)  (a) and the compensated radial power spectra of the density (b) at times t = 0.5 ms and t = 2 ms.

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