Analysis of the interaction of a shock with two square bubbles containing different gases

Abstract

The shock–bubble interaction problem remains of interest to researchers to study shock accelerated in-homogeneous flows and the Richtmyer–Meshkov instability. In the present work, simulations have been performed using the high-order Direct Flux Reconstruction scheme to study such interactions when a Mach 1.22 shock is incident on two configurations: one in which a helium bubble is in front of SF6, and, the other in which SF6 is in front of helium; in both cases, the ambient gas is nitrogen. High-order schemes are often preferred for such cases since these interactions usually involve small-scale flow features that are better resolved using high-order methods. When helium is in front of SF6, the helium bubble traverses along the initial horizontal surface of the SF6 and nitrogen, and with time, moves ahead of SF6. There are no regions of pure helium for this case at later stages. When SF6 is placed in front of helium, a separation of helium takes place in two parts, one of which mixes with SF6 while the other remains mostly pure even at later stages. A jet of nitrogen can also be seen moving at very high speeds, penetrating the region of pure helium.