A solution to the overdamping problem when simulating dust–gas mixtures with smoothed particle hydrodynamics

We present a fix to the overdamping problem found by Laibe & Price (2012) when simulating strongly coupled dust-gas mixtures using two different sets of particles using smoothed particle hydrodynamics. Our solution is to compute the drag at the barycentre between gas and dust particle pairs when computing the drag force by reconstructing the velocity field, similar to the procedure in Godunov-type solvers. This fixes the overdamping problem at negligible computational cost, but with additional memory required to store velocity derivatives. We employ slope limiters to avoid spurious oscillations at shocks, finding the van Leer Monotonized Central limiter most effective.
6 pages, 5 figures, accepted to MNRAS