Title: Two-dimensional simulation of a shock-accelerated gas cylinder

Authors: Amol Palekar, Peter Vorobieff, C. Randall Truman

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA

Abstract: The Richtmyer-Meshkov Instability (RMI) arises when a density gradient in a fluid (gas) is subjected to an impulsive acceleration (e.g., due to a shock wave passage). The evolution of RMI is non-linear and hydrodynamically complex and hence is a very good test problem to validate numerical codes. In this paper, we present a two-dimensional numerical simulation of RMI-driven evolution of the flow produced by shock acceleration of a diffuse heavy gaseous cylinder embedded in lighter gas. The initial conditions employed in the simulation are a very close match to the initial conditions realised in a well-characterised experiment, facilitating a detailed quantitative comparison with experimental measurements, as well as with other simulations of the same experiment. Comparison of the late-time flow statistics between experiment and numerics elucidates the limitations inherently present in a two-dimensional simulation of a spatially three-dimensional flow, even if the large-scale flow structure is nominally two-dimensional.

Keywords: Richtmyer-Meshkov instability; 2D simulation; validation; shock acceleration; gas cylinders; 3D flow; shock waves; computational fluid dynamics; CFD.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2007.015775

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2007 Vol.7 No.8, pp.427 - 438

Published online: 14 Nov 2007 *

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