Abstract
We develop the linear theory for the asymptotic growth of the incompressible Rayleigh-Taylor instability of an accelerated solid slab of density , shear modulus , and thickness , placed over a semi-infinite ideal fluid of density . It extends previous results for Atwood number [B. J. Plohr and D. H. Sharp, Z. Angew. Math. Phys. 49, 786 (1998)] to arbitrary values of and unveil the singular feature of an instability threshold below which the slab is stable for any perturbation wavelength. As a consequence, an accelerated elastic-solid slab is stable if .
- Received 10 July 2017
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.96.063115
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