Dynamics of buoyancy-driven flows at moderately high Atwood numbers

Simultaneous density and velocity turbulence statistics for Rayleigh Taylor-driven flows at a moderately high Atwood number (A(t)) of 0.73 +/- 0.02 arc obtained using a new convective type or statistically steady gas tunnel facility. Air and air-helium mixture are used as working fluids to create a density difference in this facility, with a thin splitter plate separating the two streams flowing parallel to each other at the same velocity (U=3 m s(-1)). At the end of the splitter plate, the two miscible fluids arc allowed to mix and the instability develops. Visualization and Mie-scattering techniques are used to obtain structure shape, volume fraction profile and mixing height growth information. Particle image velocimetry (PIV) and hot-wire techniques are used to measure planar and point-wise velocity statistics in the developing mixing layer. Asymmetry is evident in the flow field from the Mie-scattering images, with the spike side showing a more gradual decline in volume fraction than the bubble side. The spike side of the mixing layer grows 50% faster than the bubble side. PIV is implemented for the first time in these moderately high-Atwood-number experiments (A(t) > 0.1) to obtain root-mean-square velocities, anisotropy tensor components and Reynolds stresses across the mixing layer. Overall, the turbulence statistics measured have shown different scaling compared to small-Atwood-number experiments. However, the total probability density functions for the velocities and turbulent mass fluxes exhibit behaviour similar to small-Atwood-number experiments. Conditional statistics reveal different values for turbulence statistics for spikes and bubbles, unlike small-Atwood-number experiments.