A vortex model for Richtmyer–Meshkov instability accounting for finite Atwood number

The vortex model developed by Jacobs and Sheeley [“Experimental study of incompressible Richtmyer–Meshkov instability,” Phys. Fluids 8, 405 (1996)] is essentially a solution to the governing equations for the case of a uniform density fluid. Thus, this model strictly speaking only applies to the case of vanishing small Atwood number. A modification to this model for small to finite Atwood number is proposed in which the vortex row utilized is perturbed such that the vortex spacing is smaller across the spikes and larger across the bubbles, a fact readily observed in experimental images. It is shown that this modification more effectively captures the behavior of experimental amplitude measurements, especially when compared with separate bubble and spike data. In addition, it is shown that this modification will cause the amplitude to deviate from the logarithmic result given by the heuristic models at late time.