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Vladimir Stadnichuk

Publications and source records attributed to Vladimir Stadnichuk.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Kinetic regimes in aggregating systems with spontaneous and collisional fragmentation

We analyze systems of clusters and interacting upon colliding---a collision between two clusters may lead to merging or fragmentation---and we also investigate the influence of additional spontaneous fragmentation events. We consider both closed systems in which the total mass remains constant and open systems driven by a source of small-mass clusters. In closed systems, the size distribution of aggregates approaches a steady state. For these systems the relaxation time and the steady state distribution are determined mostly by spontaneous fragmentation while collisional fragmentation plays a minor role. For open systems, in contrast, the collisional fragmentation dominates. In this case, the system relaxes to a quasi-stationary state where cluster densities linearly grow with time, while the functional form of the cluster size distribution persists and coincides with the steady state size distribution of a system which has the same aggregation and fragmentation rates and only collisional fragmentation.

cond-mat.stat-mech

Size distribution of particles in Saturn's rings from aggregation and fragmentation

Saturn's rings consist of a huge number of water ice particles, with a tiny addition of rocky material. They form a flat disk, as the result of an interplay of angular momentum conservation and the steady loss of energy in dissipative inter-particle collisions. For particles in the size range from a few centimeters to a few meters, a power-law distribution of radii, $\sim r^{-q}$ with $q \approx 3$, has been inferred; for larger sizes, the distribution has a steep cutoff. It has been suggested that this size distribution may arise from a balance between aggregation and fragmentation of ring particles, yet neither the power-law dependence nor the upper size cutoff have been established on theoretical grounds. Here we propose a model for the particle size distribution that quantitatively explains the observations. In accordance with data, our model predicts the exponent $q$ to be constrained to the interval $2.75 \le q \le 3.5$. Also an exponential cutoff for larger particle sizes establishes naturally with the cutoff-radius being set by the relative frequency of aggregating and disruptive collisions. This cutoff is much smaller than the typical scale of micro-structures seen in Saturn's rings.

astro-ph.EP

Smoluchowski aggregation-fragmentation equations: Fast numerical algorithm for steady-state solution

We propose an efficient and fast numerical algorithm of finding a \emph{stationary} solution of large systems of aggregation-fragmentation equations of Smoluchowski type for concentrations of reacting particles. This method is applicable when the stationary concentrations steeply decreases with increasing aggregate size, which is fulfilled for the most important cases. We show that under rather mild restrictions, imposed on the kernel of the Smoluchowski equation, the following numerical procedure may be used: First, a complete solution for a relatively small number of equations (a "seed system") is generated and then the result is exploited in a fast iterative scheme. In this way the new algorithm allows to obtain a steady-state solution for rather large systems of equations, by orders of magnitude faster than the standard schemes.

physics.comp-ph