Attenuation of Richtmyer-Meshkov instability growth of fluid layer via double shock

Abstract

Suppression of the hydrodynamic instabilities involved in the inertial confinement fusion has attracted much attention but remains a challenge. In this work, we report the first theoretical analysis and experimental validation on attenuating the instability growth of a shock-accelerated fluid layer through a second shock impact. An analytical model is established to predict linear growth rates of the perturbations at two interfaces of the layer by considering both the effects of interface coupling and reverberating waves. Theoretically, there are nine possibilities for simultaneously attenuating the instability growths of perturbations at the two interfaces. Accordingly, shock-tube experiments are specially designed and conducted, and nine possibilities are all realized by experiments, which verifies the reliability of the analytical model and also demonstrates the feasibility of attenuating the instability growth of a fluid layer via double shock.