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Experimental investigation of cylindrically divergent Rayleigh–Taylor instability on a water–air interface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2025

Yu Liang Open the ORCID record for Yu Liang [Opens in a new window]  and
Xisheng Luo Open the ORCID record for Xisheng Luo [Opens in a new window]
Yu Liang*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of High Temperature Gas Dynamics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, PR China School of Engineering Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China
Xisheng Luo*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of High Temperature Gas Dynamics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, PR China Advanced Propulsion Laboratory, Department of Modern Mechanics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, PR China
*
Corresponding authors: Xisheng Luo, xluo@ustc.edu.cn; Yu Liang, liangyu@imech.ac.cn
Corresponding authors: Xisheng Luo, xluo@ustc.edu.cn; Yu Liang, liangyu@imech.ac.cn
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Abstract

This study investigated the cylindrically divergent Rayleigh–Taylor instability (RTI) on a liquid–gas interface and its dependence on initial conditions. A novel hydrophobic technique was developed to generate a two-dimensional water–air interface with controlled initial conditions. The experimental configuration utilised high-pressure air injection to produce uniform circumferential acceleration. Amplitude measurements over time revealed that the cylindrical RTI growth depends strongly on the azimuthal wavenumber. Experimental results demonstrated that surface tension significantly suppresses the liquid–gas cylindrical RTI, even inducing a freeze-out and oscillatory perturbation growth – a phenomenon observed for the first time. Spectrum analysis of the interface contours demonstrated that the cylindrical RTI evolves in a weakly nonlinear regime. Linear and weakly nonlinear models were derived to accurately predict the time-varying interface amplitudes and high-order modes. The linear model was further used to determine conditions for unstable, freeze-out and oscillatory solutions of the cylindrically divergent RTI. These findings offer valuable insights into manipulating hydrodynamic instabilities in contracting/expanding geometries using surface tension.

JFM classification

Instability: Instability Multiphase and Particle-laden Flows: Multiphase flow

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Type
JFM Rapids
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 1016 , 10 August 2025 , R2
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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