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Effect Of Slow Compression On The Linear Stability Of An Accelerated Shear Layer, John D. Ramshaw

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

An analysis is given of the effect of a slow uniform anisotropic compression or expansion on the linear stability of a normally accelerated planar interface between two fluids with different densities and tangential velocities, i.e., a combined Kelvin-Helmholtz and Rayleigh-Taylor instability, but generalized to an arbitrary time-dependent acceleration history. The compression is presumed to be sufficiently slow that the density remains uniform within each fluid and hence depends only on time. The perturbation is taken to be sinusoidal with amplitude h(t). The time evolution of h is determined by requiring pressure continuity across the interface in the usual way. The …