Special Session 12: Hyperbolic Partial Differential Equations and Applications

Rayleigh-Taylor instability and beyond

Ronghua Pan
Georgia Institute of Technology
USA
Co-Author(s):    
Abstract:
It is known in physics that steady state of fluids under the influence of uniform gravity is stable if and only if the convection is absent. In the context of incompressible fluids, convection happens when heavier fluids is on top of lighter fluids, known as Rayleigh-Taylor instability. However, in real world, heat transfer plays an important role in convection of fluids, such as the weather changes, and or cooking a meal. In this context, the compressibility of the fluids becomes important. Indeed, using the more realistic model of compressible flow with heat transfer, the behavior of solutions is much closer to the real world and more complicated. We will discuss these topics in this lecture, including some on-going research projects.