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发表于 2010-3-26 12:28:18
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Rayleigh-Taylor instability
From wiki:
The Rayleigh–Taylor instability, or RT instability (after Lord Rayleigh and G. I. Taylor), is an instability of an interface between two fluids of different densities, which occurs when the lighter fluid is pushing the heavier fluid.[1] [2] This is the case with an interstellar cloud and shock system. The equivalent situation occurs when gravity is acting on two fluids of different density — with the dense fluid above a fluid of lesser density — such as water balancing on light oil.[2]
Consider two completely plane-parallel layers of immiscible fluid, the heavier on top of the light one and both subject to the Earth's gravity. The equilibrium here is unstable to certain perturbations or disturbances. An unstable disturbance will grow and lead to a release of potential energy, as the heavier material moves down under the (effective) gravitational field, and the lighter material is displaced upwards. This was the set-up as studied by Lord Rayleigh.[2] The important insight by G. I. Taylor was, that he realised this situation is equivalent to the situation when the fluids are accelerated (without gravity), with the lighter fluid accelerating into the heavier fluid.[2] This can be experienced, for example, by accelerating a glass of water downward faster than the Earth's gravitational acceleration.[2]
As the instability develops, downward-moving irregularities ('dimples') are quickly magnified into sets of inter-penetrating Rayleigh–Taylor fingers. Therefore the Rayleigh–Taylor instability is sometimes qualified to be a fingering instability.[3] The upward-moving, lighter material is shaped like mushroom caps.[4][5]
This process is evident not only in many terrestrial examples, from salt domes to weather inversions, but also in astrophysics and electrohydrodynamics. RT fingers are especially obvious in the Crab Nebula, in which the expanding pulsar wind nebula powered by the Crab pulsar is sweeping up ejected material from the supernova explosion 1000 years ago.[6] |
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