A Test Suite for 3D Radiative Hydrodynamics Simulations of Protoplanetary Disks
Abstract
Radiative hydrodynamics simulations of protoplanetary disks with different treatments for radiative cooling demonstrate disparate evolutions (see Durisen et al. 2006, PPV chapter). Some of these differences include the effects of convection and metallicity on disk cooling and the susceptibility of the disk to fragmentation. Because a principal reason for these differences may be the treatment of radiative cooling, the accuracy of cooling algorithms must be evaluated. In this paper we describe a radiative transport test suite, and we challenge all researchers who use radiative hydrodynamics to study protoplanetary disk evolution to evaluate their algorithms with these tests. The test suite can be used to demonstrate an algorithm's accuracy in transporting the correct flux through an atmosphere and in reaching the correct temperature structure, to test the algorithm's dependence on resolution, and to determine whether the algorithm permits of inhibits convection when expected. In addition, we use this test suite to demonstrate the accuracy of a newly developed radiative cooling algorithm that combines vertical rays with flux-limited diffusion.
This research was supported in part by a Graduate Student Researchers Program fellowship.- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2006
- Bibcode:
- 2006AAS...209.7606B