title: Retarding viscous Rayleigh-Taylor mixing by an optimized additional mode.
abstract: The Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) mixing induced by random interface disturbances between two incompressible viscous fluids is simulated numerically. The ensemble averaged spike velocity is found to be remarkably retarded when the random interface disturbances are superimposed with an optimized additional mode. The mode's wavenumber is selected to be large enough to avoid enhancing the dominance of long-wavelength modes, but not so large that its saturated spike and bubble velocities are too small to stimulate a growing effective density-gradient layer suppressing the long-wavelength modes. Such an optimized suppressing mode is expected to be found in the RT mixing including other diffusion processes, e.g., concentration diffusion and thermal diffusion.
authors.affiliation: CAPT-HEDPS, IFSA Collaborative Innovation Center of MoE, SKLTCS, Department of Mechanics and Engineering Science, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: C Y
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: CAPT-HEDPS, IFSA Collaborative Innovation Center of MoE, SKLTCS, Department of Mechanics and Engineering Science, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Tao
authors.affiliation: CAPT-HEDPS, IFSA Collaborative Innovation Center of MoE, SKLTCS, Department of Mechanics and Engineering Science, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Z L
authors.initials: ZL
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li