Fundamental Studies of Shock-Driven Hydrodynamic Instabilities

This book illustrates the latest progress on the hydrodynamic instabilities induced by a shock wave, particularly RM (Richtmyer–Meshkov) instability. The hydrodynamic instabilities play crucial roles in various industrial and scientific fields, such as inertial confinement fusion, supersonic combustion, supernova explosion, etc. This book experimentally and theoretically explores the shock-driven instabilities of complex gas-gas and gas-liquid interfaces. The main difficulty in performing an experimental study on RM instability, especially in a shock-tube circumstance, lies in creating an idealized initial interface because the RM instability is extremely sensitive to the initial condition. This book introduces new experimental methods to generate shape-controllable two-dimensional gaseous interfaces, thickness-controllable gas layers, and water droplets embedded with a vapour bubble in the shock-tube experiments. It covers the latest experiments and theories on the shock-driven hydrodynamic instabilities of multi-mode, multi-layer, and multi-phase interfaces. It explores the effects of the mode-competition, interface-coupling, and phase-transition on interface evolution, respectively. This book establishes a universal nonlinear theory to predict the RM instability of a shocked multi-mode interface based on spectrum analysis. This book quantifies the effects of interface-coupling and reverberating waves on the hydrodynamic instabilities of a shocked multi-layer interface. This book provides the experimental studies of the interaction of a shock wave and a multi-phase droplet and proposes a modified Rayleigh-Plesset equation to predict the vapour bubble collapse inside a droplet.