Nonsteady condensation and evaporation waves

Abstract

We study motion of a phase transition front at a constant temperature between stable and metastable states in fluids with the universal Van der Waals equation of state (which is valid sufficiently close to the fluid's critical point). We focus on a case of relatively large metastability and low viscosity, when it can be shown analytically that no steadily moving phase-transition front exists. Numerically simulating a system of the one-dimensional Navier-Stokes and continuity equations, we find that, in this case, the nonsteady phase-transition front emits acoustic shocks in forward and backward directions. Through this mechanism, the front drops its velocity and eventually comes to a halt. The acoustic shock wave may shuttle, bouncing elastically from the system's edge and strongly inelastically from the phase transition front. Nonsteady rarefaction shock waves appear in the shuttle process, despite the fact that the model does not admit steady rarefaction waves propagating between stationary states. If the viscosity is below a certain threshold, an instability sets in, driving the system into a turbulent state. This work was supported by the Japan Society for Promotion of Science.Comment: revtex text file and four eps files with figures. Physical Review Letters, in pres