Abstract

This talk will present the current state of our research. It can be divided into two categories; experimental and numerical. With regard to experiments, significant progress towards a full three-dimensional data set has been made, in the form of successful simultaneous stereoscopic particle image velocimetry and planar laser-induced fluorescence experiments. The velocity fields collected from these experiments are used to perform some preliminary large-scale structure detection. We also present progress in the development of a new method for analysing data collected by planar laser-induced fluorescence. From a numerical perspective, we show direct numerical simulations of multimode Rayleigh-Taylor instability using the three-dimensional, finite volume code TurMix3D. These simulations facilitate a first look at the attracting and repelling manifolds defined by finite-time Lyapunov exponents, which are produced during Rayleigh-Taylor mixing. We also present a comparison of several vortex detection methods, including the first application of rortex-shear decomposition to Rayleigh-Taylor instability. This paves the way for future work aimed at bringing these two strands of research together. This goal will involve the collection of a full three-dimensional three-component data set, the development of a model for our initial conditions so as to reproduce our experiments numerically, and the analysis of large-scale structures using the finite-time Lyapunov exponents and the vortex detection methods we have implemented.