Atwood effects on nonlocality of the scalar transport closure in three-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor mixing

Abstract

The importance of nonlocality is assessed in modeling mean scalar transport for turbulent Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) mixing at different Atwood numbers. Building on the two-dimensional incompressible work of Lavacot et al. (2024, JFM), the present work extends the Macroscopic Forcing Method (MFM) to variable density problems in three-dimensional space to measure moments of the generalized eddy diffusivity kernel in RT mixing for increasing Atwood numbers (A=0.05, 0.3, 0.5, 0.8). It is found that as A increases: 1) the eddy diffusivity moments become asymmetric, and 2) the higher-order eddy diffusivity moments become larger relative to the leading-order diffusivity, indicating that nonlocality becomes more important at higher A. There is a particularly strong temporal nonlocality at higher $A$, suggesting stronger history effects. The implications of these findings for closure modeling for finite-Atwood RT are discussed.