In this paper, the three-dimensional (3D) Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) with low Atwood number ($A_t=0.15$) in a long square duct ($12W\times W\times W$) is studied by using a multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann (LB) multiphase model. The effect of the Reynolds number on the interfacial dynamics and bubble and spike amplitudes at late time is investigated in detail. The numerical results show that at sufficiently large Reynolds numbers, a sequence of stages in the 3D immiscible RTI can be observed, which includes the linear growth, terminal velocity growth, reacceleration, and chaotic development stages. At late stage, the RTI induces a very complicated topology structure of the interface, and an abundance of dissociative drops are also observed in the system. The bubble and spike velocities at late stage are unstable and their values have exceeded the predictions of the potential flow theory [V. N. Goncharov, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 134502 (2002)]. The acceleration of the bubble front is also measured and it is found that the normalized acceleration at late time fluctuates around a constant value of 0.16. When the Reynolds number is reduced to small values, some later stages cannot be reached sequentially. The interface becomes relatively smoothed and the bubble velocity at late time is approximate to a constant value, which coincides with the results of the extended Layzer model [S.-I. Sohn, Phys. Rev. E 80, 055302(R) (2009)] and the modified potential theory [R. Banerjee, L. Mandal, S. Roy, M. Khan, and M. R. Guptae, Phys. Plasmas 18, 022109 (2011)]. In our simulations, the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) parallel computing is also used to relieve the massive computational cost.

• Received 7 November 2015
• Revised 13 January 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.93.033113