Mass and Momentum Transport in the Tilted Rocket Rig Experiment

High-fidelity Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of the inclined Rayleigh-Taylor instability in the Tilted Rocket Rig experimental configuration (Smeeton and Youngs 1987, AWE Report No. O 35/87) are performed using a tenth-order compact finite difference code. These simulations are analyzed for spatial distributions of turbulent kinetic energy, turbulent mass flux velocity, species mass fraction flux, species mass fraction variance, and Favre-averaged Reynolds stresses at two time instances, t=37 ms and t=52 ms. Additionally, the vertical distribution of the components of the unclosed budget equations over the center of the domain for these quantities are examined. The dominant terms of these budget equations are further decomposed to examine the principal contributions to these terms in each axis. Notably, the principal contribution to the horizontal turbulent mass flux velocity budget is found to be from a term which is commonly neglected in many Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes models.