Hydrodynamics around aggregating charged grains

The growth of protoplanetary dust from sub-millimeter sized particles to much larger scales is not well understood. There is considerable debate about the role of electrostatic charging of grains in the aggregation process. Additional complexity arises due to the presence of complex hydrodynamic flow that couples to the aggregating grains. We study this growth process using massively parallel molecular dynamics simulations for the granular particles in combination with the smoothed-particle hydrodynamics for the interstitial flow. The results from a detailed cluster analysis are presented. Finally we propose an effective kinetic model for the charged grain aggregation inside interstitial flow.