Influence of the shape of meteoroids on their dynamics: radiation pressure and the Poynting–Robertson effect

When calculating the evolution of meteoroid orbits, it is necessary to take into account radiation forces in addition to gravitational perturbations: the solar radiation pressure force and the Poynting–Robertson effect. The key parameter for meteoroids in this paper is $A/m$, which is the area-to-mass ratio of a meteoroid.
In models describing the dynamics of meteoroids, for simplicity, one value of the $A/m$ parameter (for a spherical particle) is used for each model. However, this parameter is invariable during rotation of spherical particles, while it changes for real ones.
Given the modern accuracy of the models, the decision to use a constant value of $A/m$ is justified. However, for future models, knowledge of the distribution of the midsection area of particles of different shapes can be useful. This work is motivated by the lack of studies on the influence of the shape of meteoroids on the structural characteristics of a model meteoroid stream in the literature. The purpose of this work is to fill this gap to some extent. A simple numerical method for obtaining the distribution of the cross-sectional area of a convex particle with a random orientation is proposed. The distributions for a cube, a cylinder, and an ellipsoid of revolution are obtained. A method for generating random numbers corresponding to a given discrete distribution is described. An example of estimating the influence of the Poynting–Robertson effect and solar radiation pressure on the model Geminid shower is given.