Dust coagulation in protoplanetary disks: porosity matters

We introduce a possible disruption mechanism of dust grains in planet formation by their spinning motion. This mechanism has been discussed as rotational disruption for the interstellar dust grains. We theoretically calculate whether porous dust aggregates can be disrupted by their spinning motion and if it prohibits dust growth in protoplanetary disks. We assume radiative torque and gas-flow torque as driving sources of the spinning motion, assume that dust aggregates reach ...

We carry out three-dimensional Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulations of spherical homogeneous SiO2 dust aggregates to investigate how the mass and the porosity of the aggregates affects their ability to survive an impact at various different collision velocities (between 1 - 27.5m/s). We explore how the threshold velocities for fragmentation vary with these parameters. Crucially, we find that the porosity plays a part of utmost importance in determining the outcome of c...

To treat the problem of growing protoplanetary disc solids across the meter barrier, we consider a very simplified two-component coagulation-fragmentation model that consists of macroscopic boulders and smaller dust grains, the latter being the result of catastrophic collisions between the boulders. Boulders in turn increase their radii by sweeping up the dust fragments. An analytical solution to the dynamical equations predicts that growth by coagulation-fragmentation can be...

The pairwise collisional growth of dust aggregates consisting submicron-sized grains is the first step of the planet formation, and understanding the collisional behavior of dust aggregates is therefore essential. It is known that the main energy dissipation mechanisms are the tangential frictions between particles in contact, namely, rolling, sliding, and twisting. However, there is a large uncertainty for the strength of rolling friction, and the dependence of the collision...

Some scenarios for planetesimal formation go through a phase of collapse of gravitationally bound clouds of mm-cm-sized pebbles. Such clouds can form for example through the streaming instability in protoplanetary disks. We model the collapse process with a statistical model to obtain the internal structure of planetesimals with solid radii between 10 and 1,000 km. In the collapse, pebbles collide and, depending on relative speed, collisions have different outcomes. A mixture...

The early planetesimal growth proceeds through a sequence of sticking collisions of dust agglomerates. Very uncertain is still the relative velocity regime in which growth rather than destruction can take place. The outcome of a collision depends on the bulk properties of the porous dust agglomerates. Continuum models of dust agglomerates require a set of material parameters that are often difficult to obtain from laboratory experiments. Here, we aim at determining those para...

The collisional evolution of solid material in protoplanetary disks is a crucial step in the formation of planetesimals, comets, and planets. Although dense protoplanetary environments favor fast dust coagulation, there are several factors that limit the straightforward pathway from interstellar micron-size grains to pebble-size aggregates. Apart from the grain bouncing, fragmentation, and fast drift to the central star, a notable limiting factor is the electrostatic repulsio...

The thesis deals with the first stage of planet formation, namely dust coagulation from micron to millimeter sizes in circumstellar disks. For the first time, we collect and compile the recent laboratory experiments on dust aggregates into a collision model that can be implemented into dust coagulation models. We put this model into a Monte Carlo code that uses representative particles to simulate dust evolution. Simulations are performed using three different disk models in ...

In the last years, experiments have shown that collisions above the fragmentation threshold velocity are a potentially important growth process for protoplanatary dust aggregates. To obtain deeper understanding of this process, we performed laboratory and drop-tower experiments to study multiple impacts of small, porous dust-aggregate projectiles onto sintered dust targets. Projectile and target consisted of 1.5 micron monodisperse, spherical SiO2 monomers with volume filling...

Previous work on protoplanetary dust growth shows halt at centimeter sizes owing to the occurrence of bouncing at velocities of $\geq$ 0.1 $ms^{-1}$ and fragmentation at velocities $\geq$ 1 $ms^{-1}$. To overcome these barriers, spatial concentration of cm-sized dust pebbles and subsequent gravitational collapse have been proposed. However, numerical investigations have shown that dust aggregates may undergo fragmentation during the gravitational collapse phase. This fragment...