A new approach to Rayleigh–Taylor instability: Application to accelerated elastic solids

A new approach to Rayleigh–Taylor instability based on the Newton second law is presented. The model is applied to the instability analysis of elastic solid/viscous fluid interfaces. The effect of the thickness of the elastic medium is studied by considering a thin elastic plate. The importance of the initial transient phase that takes place before reaching the asymptotic regime is also shown.