| 1. |
- Lethuillier, A., et al.
(författare)
-
Cometary dust analogues for physics experiments
- 2022
-
Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press. - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 515:3, s. 3420-3438
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The CoPhyLab (Cometary Physics Laboratory) project is designed to study the physics of comets through a series of earth-based experiments. For these experiments, a dust analogue was created with physical properties comparable to those of the non-volatile dust found on comets. This ‘CoPhyLab dust’ is planned to be mixed with water and CO2 ice and placed under cometary conditions in vacuum chambers to study the physical processes taking place on the nuclei of comets. In order to develop this dust analogue, we mixed two components representative for the non-volatile materials present in cometary nuclei. We chose silica dust as a representative for the mineral phase and charcoal for the organic phase, which also acts as a darkening agent. In this paper, we provide an overview of known cometary analogues before presenting measurements of eight physical properties of different mixtures of the two materials and a comparison of these measurements with known cometary values. The physical properties of interest are particle size, density, gas permeability, spectrophotometry, and mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. We found that the analogue dust that matches the highest number of physical properties of cometary materials consists of a mixture of either 60 per cent/40 per cent or 70 per cent/30 per cent of silica dust/charcoal by mass. These best-fit dust analogue will be used in future CoPhyLab experiments.
|
|
| 2. |
- Lambrechts, M., et al.
(författare)
-
Spontaneous concentrations of solids through two-way drag forces between gas and sedimenting particles
- 2016
-
Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 591
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The behaviour of sedimenting particles depends on the dust-to-gas ratio of the fluid. Linear stability analysis shows that solids settling in the Epstein drag regime would remain homogeneously distributed in non-rotating incompressible fluids, even when dust-to-gas ratios reach unity. However, the nonlinear evolution has not been probed before. Here, we present numerical calculations indicating that, in a particle-dense mixture, solids spontaneously mix out of the fluid and form swarms that are overdense in particles by at least a factor 10. The instability is caused by mass-loaded regions locally breaking the equilibrium background stratification. The driving mechanism depends on nonlinear perturbations of the background flow and shares some similarity to the streaming instability in accretion discs. The resulting particle-rich swarms may stimulate particle growth by coagulation. In the context of protoplanetary discs, the instability could be relevant for aiding small particles to settle to the midplane in the outer disc. Inside the gas envelopes of protoplanets, enhanced settling may lead to a reduced dust opacity, which facilitates the contraction of the envelope. We show that the relevant physical set up can be recreated in a laboratory setting. This will allow our numerical calculations to be investigated experimentally in the future.
|
|
