Related papers: Extraterrestrial sink dynamics in granular matter
We investigate the linear axisymmetric viscous overstability in dense planetary rings with typical values of the dynamical optical depth $\tau\gtrsim 0.5$. We develop a granular flow model which accounts for the particulate nature of a…
Granular materials react to shear stresses differently than do ordinary fluids. Rather than deforming uniformly, materials such as dry sand or cohesionless powders develop shear bands: narrow zones containing large relative particle motion…
We investigate the dynamic evolution of jamming in granular media through fluctuations in the granular drag force. The successive collapse and formation of jammed states give a stick-slip nature to the fluctuations which is independent of…
Particle-particle and particle-gas processes significantly impact planetary precursors such as dust aggregates and planetesimals. We investigate gas permeability ($\kappa$) in 12 granular samples, mimicking planetesimal dust regoliths.…
The number of stars that are known to have debris disks is greater than that of stars known to harbour planets. These disks are detected because dust is created in the destruction of planetesimals in the disks much in the same way that dust…
Discrete-element simulations are used to monitor several micro-scale characteristics within a granular material, demonstrating their convergence during loading toward the critical state, their stationarity at the critical state, and the…
We describe the dynamics of a stream of equally spaced macroscopic particles in orbit around a central body (e.g. a planet or star). A co-orbital configuration of small bodies may be subject to gravitational instability, which takes the…
In this Letter, the 2-dimensional dense flow of polygonal particles on an incline with a flat frictional inferior boundary is analyzed by means of contact dynamics discrete element simulations, in order to develop boundary conditions for…
The dynamics of small bodies perturbed by an eccentric planet was done mostly under the assumption of well separated orbits using analytical approximations appropriate for the hierarchical case. In this work we study the dynamics of small…
We simulate star formation in two molecular clouds extracted from a larger disc-galaxy simulation with a spatial resolution of ~0.1 pc, one exiting a spiral arm dominated by compression, and another in an inter-arm region more strongly…
Complex structures, including sharp edges, rings and gaps, have been commonly observed in protoplanetary disks with or without planetary candidates. Here we consider the possibility that they are the intrinsic consequences of angular…
Construction throughout history typically assumes that its blueprints and building blocks are pre-determined. However, recent work suggests that alternative approaches can enable new paradigms for structure formation. Aleatory…
We present results of a simulation study of inelastic hard-disks vibrated in a vertical container. An Event-Driven Molecular Dynamics method is developed for studying the onset of convection. Varying the relevant parameters (inelasticity,…
Understanding the penetration dynamics of intruders in granular beds is relevant not only for fundamental physics, but also for geophysical processes and construction on sediments or granular soils in areas potentially affected by…
Asteroid binaries found amongst the Near-Earth objects are believed to have formed from rotational fission. In this paper, we aim to study the dynamical evolution of asteroid systems the moment after fission. The initial condition is…
We carry out experiments of low velocity normal impacts into granular materials that fill an approximately cylindrical 42 litre tub. Motions in the granular medium are tracked with an array of 7 embedded accelerometers. Longitudinal pulses…
The interaction of a satellite with a gaseous disk results in the excitation of spiral density waves which remove angular momentum from the orbit. In addition, if the orbit is not coplanar with the disk, three-dimensional effects will…
This thesis aims at improving our understanding of the strong-field regime of gravity, where deviations from General Relativity (GR) are expected to be found on theoretical grounds. In particular, we have been concerned with the formulation…
We simulate the granulation process of solid spherical particles in the presence of a viscous liquid in a horizontal rotating drum by using molecular dynamics simulations in three dimensions. The numerical approach accounts for the cohesive…
The geophysics of extrasolar planets is a scientific topic often regarded as standing largely beyond the reach of near-term observations. This reality in no way diminishes the central role of geophysical phenomena in shaping planetary…