Effects of shear flow and transverse magnetic field on Richtmyer–Meshkov instability

Abstract

The effects of shear flow and transverse magnetic field on Richtmyer–Meshkov instability are examined and the expression of the interface perturbation is obtained by analytically solving the linear ideal magnetohydrodynamics equations. It shows that the perturbation evolves exponentially rather than linearly in the presence of shear flow and magnetic field when va<1−AT2δu∕2, where va is the modified Alfvén velocity, AT is the Atwood number, and δu is the relative shear velocity, respectively. The shear flow acts as a destabilizing source, while the magnetic field is a stabilizing mechanism of the shocked corrugated interface problem. The whole analysis is based on the assumption that the fluid is incompressible.