NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF RICHTMYER-MESHKOV INSTABILITY USING FRONT TRACKING

Front tracking simulations of the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability produce significantly better agreement with experimentally measured growth rates than obtained in nontracking computations. Careful analysis of the early stages of the shock acceleration process show that nonlinearity and compressibility play a critical role in the behaviour of the shocked interface and are responsible for the deviations from the linear theories. The late-time behaviour of the interface growth rate is compared to a nonlinear potential flow model of Hecht et al.