Influence of Gas Turbulence on the Instability of an Air-Water Mixing Layer.

We present the first evidence of the direct influence of gas turbulence on the shear instability of a planar air-water mixing layer. We show with two different experiments that increasing the level of velocity fluctuations in the gas phase continuously increases the frequency of the instability, up to a doubling of frequency for the largest turbulence intensity investigated. A modified spatiotemporal stability analysis taking turbulence into account via a simple Reynolds stress closure provides the right trend and magnitude for this effect.