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M.B. Zellner (Millersville U.), J.L. Cash (U. Wyoming)
The purpose of this project was to create a model of the accretion stream trajectory of a cataclysmic variable that included internal interactions between the particles themselves in the accretion stream. Our previous models represent the trajectory of the accretion stream well, but these models only take the gravitational affects and the Coriolis effect when calculating the trajectory. To accomplish this task of modeling the interactions within the accretion stream flow along with gravitational and Coriolis effects, we used a type of hydrodynamics called Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (developed by Lucy and Monaghan in 1977). Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics is a particle based approach to hydrodynamics. The basic difference between it and other systems is that in Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics, the computational units are not in the form of a grid of cells but rather moving points in space. These points are then halted during a "snap-shot", and the computational data is measured.
This project was completed during an internship at the University of Wyoming. Dr. Ron Canterna and Dr. Steve Howell supervised and funded the project. The head coordinator of the project was graduate student Jennifer Cash.
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