Host: The Japanese Society for Planetary Sciences: Local Organizing Committee for 2006 Fall Meeting
Millimeter-sized, spherical silicate grains abundant in chondritic meteorites, which are called as chondrules, are considered to be a strong evidence of the melting event of the dust particles in the protoplanetary disk. One of the most plausible scenarios is that the chondrule precursor dust particles are heated and melt in the high-velocity rarefied gas flow (shock-wave heating model). We considered the deformation of rotating molten dust particles exposed to the gas flow by using the three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulation. We found that the molten droplet just before solidification deforms to prolate shape and its shape is very similar to the prolate chondrules measured by Tsuchiyama et al. (2003). Our results strongly suggest that once-melted precursor particles of such prolate chondrules have solidified in the high-velocity gas flow with a proper rotation rate.
