Linear perturbation growth at the trailing edge of a rarefaction wave

An analytic model for the perturbation growth inside a rarefaction wave is presented. The objective of the work is to calculate the growth of the perturbations at the trailing edge of a simple expanding wave in planar geometry. Previous numerical and analytical works have shown that the ripples at the rarefaction tail exhibit linear growth asymptotically in time [Yang et al., Phys. Fluids 6, 1856 (1994), A. Velikovich and L. Phillips, ibid. 8, 1107 (1996)]. However, closed expressions for the asymptotic value of the perturbed velocity of the trailing edge have not been reported before, except for very weak rarefactions. Explicit analytic solutions for the perturbations growing at the rarefaction trailing edge as a function of time and also for the asymptotic perturbed velocity are given, for fluids with $γ<3.$ The limits of weak and strong rarefactions are considered and the corresponding scaling laws are given. A semi-qualitative discussion of the late time linear growth at the trailing edge ripple is presented and it is seen that the lateral mass flow induced by the sound wave fluctuations is solely responsible for that behavior. Only the rarefactions generated after the interaction of a shock wave with a contact discontinuity are considered.