Particle accretion and dissipation simulator: Collisional aggregation of icy particles

As a part of a project to study the cometary particle environment, a self-consistent ballistic rigid body particle colliding simulator, capable of producing fractal aggregates of icy particles modelled by hard or soft (metaball) spheres has been developed, to be used for creating test particles in future statistical studies of the cometary coma–particle interaction. Instead of a predefined sticking probability, actual surface interactions are modelled and a method for calculating internal stresses and fragmentation of an aggregate during the accretion phase is described. Simulations suggest that taking fragmentation into account has two major consequences, increase in the fractal dimension of resulting particles and a noticeable change in the mass spectrum of an ensemble.