MOLECULAR DYNAMICS SIMULATIONS OF RAYLEIGH–TAYLOR INSTABILITY
This review presents application of molecular dynamics to investigation of the Rayleigh–Taylor instability. A parallel program for simulation of 2-D Lennard–Jones systems with large number of particles (106+) was developed and used. The algorithm is based on the geometric decomposition and it was implemented on networked workstations, CONVEX Exemplar SPP 1×00, TMC CM5, and on Cray T3D under PVM. A broad collection of simulation results for millions of particles and up to half a million of time steps has been obtained and analyzed. Due to thermal fluctuations of a certain wavelength a mixing process can be observed in microscale. The results obtained for different particle–particle interactions, temperatures and computational boxes are compared and discussed. Unlike in macroscale, the patterns observed are created via spontaneous fluctuations in the particle fluid. Two stages of the Rayleigh–Taylor process resulting from long-range correlations are distinguished. Influence of temperature on the speed of mixing and pattern creation is shown.
