Porosities of Protoplanetary Dust Agglomerates from Collision Experiments

Abstract

Aggregation of dust through sticking collisions is the first step of planet formation. Basic physical properties of the evolving dust aggregates strongly depend on the porosity of the aggregates, e.g. mechanical strength, thermal conductivity, gas-grain coupling time. Also the outcome of further collisions depends on the porosity of the colliding aggregates. In laboratory experiments we study the growth of large aggregates of $\sim$ 3 mm to 3 cm through continuous impacts of small dust agglomerates of 100 $\mu$m size, consisting of $\mu$m grains at different impact velocities. The experiments show that agglomerates grow by direct sticking as well as gravitational reaccretion. The latter can be regarded as suitable analog to reaccretion of fragments by gas drag in protoplanetary disks. Experiments were carried out in the velocity range between 1.5 m/s and 7 m/s. With increasing impact velocities the volume filling factor of the resulting agglomerates increases from $\phi = 0.2$ for 1.5 m/s to $\phi = 0.32$ for 7 m/s. These values are independent of the target size. Extrapolation of the measured velocity dependence of the volume filling factor implies that higher collision velocities will not lead to more compact aggregates. Therefore, $\phi = 0.32$ marks a degree of compaction suitable to describe structures forming at $\rm v > 6\, m/s$. At small collision velocities below 1 m/s highly porous structures with $\phi \approx 0.10$ will form. For intermediate collision velocities porosities vary. Depending on the disk model and resulting relative velocities, objects in protoplanetary disks up to dm-size might evolve from highly porous ($\phi \approx 0.10$) to compact ($\phi = 0.32$) with a more complex intermediate size range of varying porosity.