Axisymmetric Dusty Gas-Kinetic Models for Comet 46P/Wirtanen

Details Axisymmetric Dusty Gas-Kinetic Models for Comet 46P/Wirtanen Axisymmetric Dusty Gas-Kinetic Models for Comet 46P/Wirtanen

Nov 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001dps....33.2018c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS Meeting #33, #20.18; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 33, p.1078

Statistics

Scientific paper

For most of the time in its orbit, the gas production rate of the ROSETTA target comet, 46P/Wirtanen, is small enough so that the gas flow is in a high Knudsen number regime except for the immediate region around the nucleus which is likely concentrated on the day side. In order to model the conditions at the typical distances where the orbiter will reside ( 50 - 100 km), standard gas-dynamics treatments are not always appropriate. Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) is a kinetic particle method, which provides a solution for the generalized collisional Boltzmann equation that is appropriate everywhere: in the fluid region near the nucleus, in the collision transition region, and in the practically collisionless free-flow region at larger distances. We present results here for an axisymmetric coma appropriate for comet Wirtanen at a range of heliocentric distances using a dusty gas-kinetic calculation based on DSMC. The gas flow is modeled at the molecular level, accounting explicitly for both molecule-molecule collisions and molecule-dust particle collisions. Dust particle densities and velocities are calculated by solving the mass and momentum conservation equations, where the gas-related source terms (gas-dust drag, and gas-dust heating) are calculated using the standard kinetic theory velocity moments of the molecular velocity distribution function, which in turn is assembled from the individual particle statistics. The calculation was tested in the fluid limit by comparison with dusty-gas hydrodynamics. (Work at the University of Michigan is supported by grant NAG5-8942 from the NASA Planetary Atmospheres Program.)

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