Growth rate and transition to turbulence of a gas curtain

The authors conduct shock-tube experiments to investigate Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM) instability of a narrow curtain of heavy gas (SF{sub 6}) embedded in lighter gas (air). Initial perturbations of the curtain can be varied, producing different flow patterns in the subsequent evolution of the curtain. Multiple-exposure video flow visualization provides images of the growth of the instability and its transition to turbulence, making it possible to extract quantitative information such as the width of the perturbed curtain. They demonstrate that the width of the curtain with initial perturbation on the downstream side is non-monotonic. As the initial perturbation undergoes phase inversion, the width of the curtain actually decreases before beginning to grow as the RM instability evolves