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D.C. Boice (SwRI), J.-I. Watanabe (NAOJ)
Recent progress is presented on a fluid dynamics model for the dusty gas flow in the inner coma of comet Hale-Bopp. Numerical simulations are based on a spherically symmetric coma model with dust entrainment to study the complex interaction between the expanding gas and dust particles. The model can account for a distribution of particle sizes and dust fragmentation. This permits a consistent study of the importance of various physical mechanisms on the exchange of mass, momentum, and energy between the gas and dust particles near the nucleus of a comet.
Simulations are performed to investigate the heliocentric distance dependence of dust and gas properties within a cometary coma, in particular, spatial distributions of dust of various sizes, the velocity and temperature structure of the gas and dust including terminal dust velocities, and the dependence of mass-loading and heating of the gas as a function of dust-to-gas mass release ratio, particle size distribution, dust fragmentation, and gas-dust accomodation coefficient. Comparisons with observations of comet Hale-Bopp are made to aid in interpreting the wealth of data concerning this spectacular object.