Related papers: Simulating regoliths in microgravity
The porosity of an asteroid is important when studying the evolution of our solar system through small bodies and for planning mitigation strategies to avoid disasters due to asteroid impacts. Our knowledge of asteroid porosity largely…
We report numerical simulations of strongly vibrated granular materials designed to mimic recent experiments performed both in presence [1] or absence [2] of gravity. We show that a model with impact velocity dependent restitution…
In this paper we present results of two novel experimental methods to investigate the collisional behavior of individual macroscopic icy bodies. The experiments reported here were conducted in the microgravity environments of parabolic…
Remote measurements and in-situ observations confirm the idea that asteroids up to few hundreds of meters in size might be rubble piles. The dynamics of these objects can be studied using N-body simulations of gravitational aggregation. We…
Non-cohesive granular media exhibit complex responses to sudden impact that often differ from those of ordinary solids and liquids. We investigate how this response is mediated by the presence of interstitial gas between the grains. Using…
The arrangements of particles and forces in granular materials have a complex organization on multiple spatial scales that ranges from local structures to mesoscale and system-wide ones. This multiscale organization can affect how a…
Both the shape of individual particles and their surface properties contribute to the strength of a granular material under shear. Here we show the degree to which these two aspects can be intertwined. In experiments on assemblies of 3D…
Several physical mechanisms are involved in excavating granular materials beneath a vertical jet of gas. These occur, for example, beneath the exhaust plume of a rocket landing on the soil of the Moon or Mars. A series of experiments and…
Drastic changes in protoplanets' orbits could occur in the early stages of planetary systems through interactions with other planets and their surrounding protoplanetary or debris discs. The resulting planetary system could exhibit orbits…
Transporting solids of different sizes is an essential process in the evolution of protoplanetary disks and planet formation. Large solids are supposed to drift inward; high-temperature minerals found in comets are assumed to have been…
We report on the differences between colloidal systems left to evolve in the earth's gravitational field and the same systems for which a slow continuous rotation averaged out the effects of particle sedimentation on a distance scale small…
Material failure is ubiquitous, with implications from geology to everyday life and material science. It often involves sudden, unpredictable events, with little or no macroscopically detectable precursors. A deeper understanding of the…
Granular materials -- aggregates of many discrete, disconnected solid particles -- are ubiquitous in natural and industrial settings. Predictive models for their behavior have wide ranging applications, e.g. in defense, mining,…
The overall shape, internal structure and surface morphology of small bodies such as asteroids and comets are determined to a large degree by the last global-scale impact or disruption event. Depending on the specific energy, impacts lead…
To reveal the formation of planetesimals it is of great importance to understand the collision behavior of the dusty and icy aggregates they have formed from. We present an experimental setup to investigate the aggregation properties in…
Asteroid binaries found amongst the Near-Earth objects are believed to have formed from rotational fission. In this paper, we aim to study the dynamical evolution of asteroid systems the moment after fission. The initial condition is…
Context.Within the sequential accretion scenario of planet formation, planets are build up through a sequence sticking collisions. The outcome of collisions between porous dust aggregates is very important for the growth from very small…
Most meteorites are fragments from recent collisions experienced in the asteroid belt. In such a hyper-velocity collision, the smaller collision partner is destroyed, whereas a crater on the asteroid is formed or it is entirely disrupted,…
Planetisimals are thought to be formed from the solid material of a protoplanetary disk by a process of dust aggregation. It is not known how growth proceeds to kilometre sizes, but it has been proposed that water ice beyond the snowline…
Recent observations of asteroidal surfaces indicate the presence of materials that do not match the bulk lithology of the body. A possible explanation for the presence of these exogenous materials is that they are products of inter-asteroid…