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The formation of giant planets requires accumulation of ~10 Earth mass insolids; but how do protoplanets acquire their mass? There are many, oftencompeting processes that regulate the accretion rate of protoplanets. To assesstheir effects we present a new, publicly-available toy model. The rationalebehind the toy model is that it encompasses as many physically-relevantprocesses as possible, but at the same time does not compromise its simplicity,speed, and physical insight. The toy model follows a modular structure, wherekey features -- e.g. planetesimal fragmentation, radial orbital decay, nebulaturbulence -- can be switched on or off. Our model assumes three discretecomponents (fragments, planetesimals, and embryos) and is zero dimensional inspace. We have tested the outcomes of the toy model against literature resultsand generally find satisfactory agreement. We include, for the first time,model features that capture the three-way interactions among small particles,gas, and protoplanets. Collisions among planetesimals will result infragmentation, transferring a substantial amount of the solid mass to smallparticles, which couple strongly to the gas. Our results indicate that theefficiency of the accretion process then becomes very sensitive to the gasproperties -- especially to the turbulent state and the magnitude of the diskheadwind (the decrease of the orbital velocity of the gas with respect toKeplerian) -- as well as to the characteristic fragment size.

Understanding how planets become massive. I. Description and validation of a new toy model