Recent Advances in Hydrodynamic Instabilities

Hydrodynamic instabilities play a fundamental role across a wide range of scientific and engineering disciplines, including aerospace and propulsion, energy systems, geophysical and environmental flows, astrophysics, materials processing, inertial confinement fusion, and emerging micro- and nanoscale technologies. Flow physics becomes increasingly complex when multiple instability mechanisms—such as Richtmyer–Meshkov, Rayleigh–Taylor, Kelvin–Helmholtz, shear-layer, and buoyancy-driven instabilities—interact with turbulence, shock waves, multiphase interfaces, chemical reactions, and non-equilibrium transport phenomena. These processes are central not only to classical fluid mechanics but also to extreme natural and high-energy environments, including astrophysical explosions and plasma–fluid systems.

This Special Issue brings together recent advances in theoretical analysis, state-of-the-art experimental investigations, and high-fidelity computational and data-driven approaches, with emphasis on fundamental mechanisms, nonlinear evolution, mixing and transition processes, and broad scientific and engineering applications.