title: Asymptotic behavior of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability.
abstract: We investigate long time numerical simulations of the inviscid Rayleigh-Taylor instability at Atwood number one using a boundary integral method. We are able to attain the asymptotic behavior for the spikes predicted by Clavin and Williams for which we give a simplified demonstration. In particular, we observe that the spike's curvature evolves as t(3), while the overshoot in acceleration shows good agreement with the suggested 1/t(5) law. Moreover, we obtain consistent results for the prefactor coefficients of the asymptotic laws. Eventually we exhibit the self-similar behavior of the interface profile near the spike.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0WA, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Laurent
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Duchemin
authors.forename: Christophe
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Josserand
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Clavin