Collisional properties of cm-sized high-porosity ice and dust aggregates and their applications to early planet formation

TL;DR

This study investigates the collisional behavior of highly porous ice and dust aggregates relevant to early planet formation, combining laboratory experiments, analytical modeling, and collision simulations to understand their growth and properties.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data and models on the mechanical properties and collisional outcomes of high-porosity ice and dust aggregates in protoplanetary disks.

Findings

Porosity of 90% for ice aggregates and 85% for dust aggregates.

Determined sticking threshold velocities for high-porosity aggregates.

Developed a collision model predicting aggregate collision outcomes.

Abstract

In dead zones of protoplanetary discs, it is assumed that micrometre-sized particles grow Brownian, sediment to the midplane and drift radially inward. When collisional compaction sets in, the growing aggregates collect slower and therefore dynamically smaller particles. This sedimentation and growth phase of highly porous ice and dust aggregates is simulated with laboratory experiments in which we obtained mm- to cm-sized ice aggregates with a porosity of 90\% as well as cm-sized dust agglomerates with a porosity of 85\%. We modelled the growth process during sedimentation in an analytical calculation to compute the agglomerate sizes when they reach the midplane of the protoplanetary disc. In the midplane, the dust particles form a thin dense layer and gain relative velocities by, e.g., the streaming instability or the onset of shear turbulence. To investigate also these collisions, we performed additional laboratory drop tower experiments with the high-porosity aggregates formed in the sedimentary-growth experiments and determined their mechanical parameters, including their sticking threshold velocity, which is important for their further collisional evolution on their way to form planetesimals. Finally, we developed a method to calculate the packing-density-dependent fundamental properties of our dust and ice agglomerates, the Young's modulus, the Poisson ratio, the shear viscosity and the bulk viscosity from compression measurements. With these parameters, it was possible to derive the coefficient of restitution which fits our measurements. In order to physically describe these outcomes, we applied a collision model. With this model, predictions about general dust-aggregate collisions are possible.