Planetesimals on Eccentric Orbits Erode Rapidly
We investigate the possibility of erosion of planetesimals in a protoplanetary disk. We use theory and direct numerical simulations (lattice Boltzmann method) to calculate the erosion of large - much larger than the mean-free path of gas molecules - bodies of different shapes in flows. We find that erosion follows a universal power law in time, at intermediate times, independent of the Reynolds nu
