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The Richtmyer–Meshkov and the Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities of viscoplastic (or the Bingham) fluids are studied in the three–dimensional formulation of the problem. A numerical modeling of the intermixing of two fluids with different rheology, whose densities differ twice, as a result of instabilities development process has been carried out. The development of the Richtmyer–Meshkov and the Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities of the Bingham fluids is analyzed utilizing the MacCormack and the Volume of Fluid (VOF) methods to reconstruct the interface during the process. Both the results of numerical simulation of the named instabilities of the Bingham liquids and their comparison with theory and the results of the Newtonian fluid simulation are presented. Critical amplitude of the initial perturbation of the contact boundary velocity field at which the development of instabilities begins was estimated. This critical amplitude presents because of the yield stress exists in the Bingham fluids. Results of numerical calculations show that the yield stress of viscoplastic fluids essentially affects the nature of the development of both Rayleigh–Taylor and Richtmyer–Meshkov instabilities. If the amplitude of the initial perturbation is less than the critical value, then the perturbation decays relatively quickly, and no instability develops.When the initial perturbation exceeds the critical amplitude, the nature of the instability development resembles that of the Newtonian fluid. In a case of the Richtmyer–Meshkov instability, the critical amplitudes of the initial perturbation of the contact boundary at different values of the yield stress are estimated. There is a distinction in behavior of the non-Newtonian fluid in a plane case: with the same value of the yield stress in three-dimensional geometry, the range of the amplitude values of the initial perturbation, when fluid starts to transit from rest to motion, is significantly narrower. In addition, it is shown that the critical amplitude of the initial perturbation of the contact boundary for the Rayleigh–Taylor instability is lower than for the Richtmyer–Meshkov instability. This is due to the action of gravity, which helps the instability to develop and counteracts the forces of viscous friction.

The presence of a contact boundary between water and transformer oil greatly reduces the electrical strength of the oil phase. The presence of an electric field leads to varying degrees of polarization at the interface and the appearance of a force acting on a liquid with a higher dielectric constant (water) in the direction of a liquid with a lower dielectric constant (oil). This leads to the contact surface instability development. Instability as a result of its development leads to a stream of water being drawn into oil volume and a violation of the insulating gap. In this work, we experimentally and numerically study electrohydrodynamic instability at the phase boundary between electrically weakly conductive water and transformer oil in a highly inhomogeneous electric field directed perpendicular to the contact boundary. The results of a full-scale and numerical experiment of studying of the electrohydrodynamic instability development in a strong electric field at the interface between water and transformer oil are presented. The system consists of a spherical electrode with a radius of 3.5 mm, placed in water with a conductivity of 5 $\mu S/cm$, and a thin blade electrode 0.1 mm thick, placed in transformer oil of the GK brand. The contact boundary passes at the same distance from the nearest points of the electrodes, equal to 3 mm. The work shows that at a certain electric field strength, the cone-shaped structure of water grows towards the electrode immersed in transformer oil. A numerical correspondence was obtained for both the shape of the resulting water structure (cone) during the entire growth time and the size measured from its top to the level of the initial contact boundary of phase separation. The dynamics of this structure growth has been studied. Both in numerical calculations and in experiment, it was found that the size of the resulting cone along the electrode connection line depends linearly on time.