Related papers: Electrostatics in wind-blown sand
Dust emission mechanisms as one aspect of wind-driven particle motion on planetary surfaces are still poorly understood. The microphysics is important though as it determines dust sizes and morphologies which set sedimentation speeds and…
In clouds of suspended particles (grains, droplets, spheres, crystals, etc.), collisions electrify the particles and the clouds, producing large electric potential differences over large scales. This is seen most spectacularly in the…
Sand electrification is important for aeolian sediment transportation on terrestrial bodies with silicate sand as the main sediment composition. However, it has not been thoroughly studied for icy bodies such as Titan with organic sand as…
The most likely cause of levitation of dust above the surface of atmosphereless planets is the electrostatic mechanism. However, the crucial problem in the explanation of this effect is a determination of the reason why a large electric…
The goal of this note is to provide a theoretical explanation for the saturation of the drag coefficient in strong wind conditions. The hydrodynamic model under consideration takes into account the important effects of airborne droplets of…
Dust impacts on spacecraft are commonly detected by antenna instruments as transient voltage perturbations. The signal waveform is generated by the interaction between the impact-generated plasma cloud and the elements of the…
Windblown dust plays critical roles in numerous geophysical and biological systems, yet current models fail to explain the transport of coarse-mode particles (>5 $\mu$m) to great distances from their sources. For particles larger than a few…
Aeolian transport of sand and dust is driven by turbulent winds that fluctuate over a broad range of temporal and spatial scales. However, commonly used aeolian transport models do not explicitly account for such fluctuations, likely…
A new kinetic instability which results in formation of charge density waves is proposed. The instability is of a purely classical nature. A spatial period of arising space-charge and field configuration is inversely proportional to…
Atmospheric electrification is not a purely terrestrial phenomenon: all Solar System planetary atmospheres become slightly electrified by cosmic ray ionisation. There is evidence for lightning on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and it…
We investigate the airborne transport of particles on a granular surface by the saltation mechanism through numerical simulation of particle motion coupled with turbulent flow. We determine the saturated flux $q_{s}$ and show that its…
Our aim in this note is to introduce and study a mathematical model for the description of traveling sand dunes. We use surface flow process of sand under the effect of wind and gravity. We model this phenomena by a non linear…
To understand mechanisms of salt intrusion in estuaries, we develop a semi-analytical model, that explicitly accounts for salt transport by both exchange flow and tidal flow. This model, after calibration, successfully hindcasts…
Planet-encircling dust storms fundamentally reshape Martian weather and the near-surface electrostatic environment. We investigate the generation and evolution of electric fields during global dust storms using bimodal dust size…
Using a fluid model, the plasma densities, electron temperature and ion Mach number in front of a powered electrode in different plasma discharges is computed. The dust charge is computed using OML theory for Maxwellian electrons and ions…
The nature of turbulence at sub-electron scales has remained an open question, central to understanding how electrons are heated in the solar wind. This is primarily because spacecraft measurements have been limited to magnetic field…
Emission of dust up to a few micrometer in size by impacts of sand grains during saltation is thought to be one source of dust within the Martian atmosphere. To study this dust fraction, we carried out laboratory impact experiments. Small…
Sand patches are one of the precursors to early-stage protodunes and occur widely in both desert and coastal aeolian environments. Here we show field evidence of a mechanism to explain the initiation of sand patches on non-erodible…
It will be shown that for a solution of salt dissolved in water in contact with a metallic wall, the concentration of salt ions (both positive and negative) within a few Angstroms of the wall can be large enough to exceed the solubility…
The mesoscale structure of aeolian sand transport determines a variety of natural phenomena studied in planetary and Earth science. We analyze it theoretically beyond the mean-field level, based on the grain-scale transport kinetics and…