Colliding Stellar Winds in a Close Binary System

In this 2D simulation, the wind of the star on the right has a velocity 10 times that of the star on the left, but the left star has a momentum flux 5 times larger.

Two-Dimensional Simulations

• cylindrical geometry with stars placed on z-axis
• adiabatic, radiative cooling, or treat one or both winds as isothermal
• 300x150 grid runs in about 20 minutes on desktop

Three-Dimensional Simulations

• cartesian geometry with stars placed on z=0 plane
• add binary motion
• adiabatic, radiative cooling, or treat one or both winds as isothermal
• 120x120x60 grid runs one orbit in one hour on 10 nodes of an IBM SP
• 320x320x160 for one orbit can be run in a few hours on 80 nodes

This animation shows the gas density in the orbital plane of a 3D simulation, evolved for roughly 1/3 of an orbit. This simulation ran in 20 minutes on 10 nodes (40 processors) of an IBM SP2 at the North Carolina Supercomputing Center.