An experimental investigation into inertial properties of the developed Rayleigh–Taylor instability with the different initial values of the kinetic energy of turbulence has been performed. The experiments were performed by using two fluids having different densities with density ration n = 3. Fluids were placed in an ampoule. At the unstable stage of motion, the ampoule was moving under an acceleration. At a certain instant of time the acceleration was removed and the ampoule moved under the force of inertia. By means of pulsed X-ray photography, the mixing region size and the time-space distributionof the average density of matter in the turbulent mixing region have been determined at different instants of time. The time-space distributions are compared with those obtained by semiempirical theories of mixing.
Experimental investigation into inertial properties of Rayleigh–Taylor turbulence