Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 773, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/773/2/137
Keywords
convection; hydrodynamics; methods: numerical; stars: interiors; turbulence
Categories
Funding
- DOE Applied Mathematics Research Program of the DOE Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research under the U.S. Department of Energy [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
- DOE Office of Nuclear Physics [DE-FG02-06ER41448]
- Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
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This work presents three-dimensional simulations of core convection in a 15 M-circle dot star halfway through its main sequence lifetime. To perform the necessary long-time calculations, we use the low Mach number code MAESTRO, with initial conditions taken from a one-dimensional stellar model. We first identify several key factors that the one-dimensional initial model must satisfy to ensure efficient simulation of the convection process. We then use the three-dimensional simulations to examine the effects of two common modeling choices on the resulting convective flow: using a fixed composition approximation and using a reduced domain size. We find that using a fixed composition model actually increases the computational cost relative to using the full multi-species model because the fixed composition system takes longer to reach convection that is in a quasi-static state. Using a reduced (octant rather than full sphere) simulation domain yields flow with statistical properties that are within a factor of two of the full sphere simulation values. Both the octant and full sphere simulations show similar mixing across the convection zone boundary that is consistent with the turbulent entrainment model. However, the global character of the flow is distinctly different in the octant simulation, showing more rapid changes in the large-scale structure of the flow and thus a more isotropic flow on average.
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