Robin Humble
Email: humble@cita.utoronto.ca
Visit Robin Humble's home page
Research Summary
[
Computational Astrophysics,
Cosmology
]
Robin Humble works on building planets with dusty gas using a parallel
particle code. Drag forces between the dust and gas phases in a
protoplanetary disk determine the dust dynamics, where protoplanets
will form, and (eventually) what their compositions will be. Some
progress is also being made on the addition of fluid dynamics to a
large cosmological Tree-PM N-body code.
Research Projects:
(September 2002 - August 2003)
Dusty Protoplanetary Disks
Robin Humble works with James Murray (Leicester, Swinburne) and Sarah
Maddison (Swinburne) on protoplanetary dusty disks. The 3D non-linear
Navier-Stokes equations with two fluid phases (dust and gas) are solved
numerically in the protoplanetary disk. The dynamics of 10 micron and
larger dust grains are followed as they migrate and grow in size. Grain
growth means varying the magnitude of the drag forces between gas and
dust, and can also mean varying the form of the drag equations
themselves. Star, planet, and gas and dust self-gravity are also
included in the parallel smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code.
Resolving turbulent dust lofting and gravitational and turbulent drag
instabilities are current focus areas. A bonus of the Lagrangian
particle technique means it is trivial to track thermal and accretion
histories of dust grains. This may (one day) be used to determine
chemical compositions of planets.
[ Back to CITA People | CITA Research 2003 | CITA Annual Report 2003 ]
Questions and Comments <frolov@cita.utoronto.ca>