The Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

Problem Background

Initial Conditions

Simulations

All of the following simulation movies show density. (Red = 2 and Blue = 1)

This simulation is run with a fixed grid of 100 x 300.

• RT Movie

For this run, all parameters are the same. The grid is now 50 x 150, and there are 3 levels of AMR which yields an effective resolution that is 4x the previous run.

• RT Movie (Higher Resolution)​

I realized that uniform gravity was not working properly in the first two simulations, so here is one in which it is working. Also, this simulation is a 50 x 150 grid with 2 levels of AMR.

• RT Movie (Gravity Working)​

The previous simulation has asymmetry that is especially noticable in late time frames. After going back to my problem module, I noticed that the perturbation had some z dependence which it should not since this is a 2D simulation. Fixing that yielded a nice symmetric simulation.

• RT Movie (symmetric)​

Tracking the Interface

• Interface Movie​
• Log(interface_position) Plot​

Calculating the Growth Rate

Results