Related papers: Cohesive Regolith on Fast Rotating Asteroids
The implication of small amounts of cohesion within relatively small rubble pile asteroids is investigated with regard to their evolution under the persistent presence of the YORP effect. We find that below a characteristic size, which is a…
The scaling of physical forces to the extremely low ambient gravitational acceleration regimes found on the surfaces of small asteroids is performed. Resulting from this, it is found that van der Waals cohesive forces between regolith…
Recent space missions have provided substantial evidence of regolith movement on the surfaces of near Earth asteroids. To investigate this phenomenon, we present a continuum-based model that describes regolith motion on nearly spherical…
This paper presents transition of the failure mode of a cohesive, spherical body due to YORP spin-up. On the assumption that the distribution of materials in the body is homogeneous, failed regions first appearing in the body at different…
In situ observations of small asteroids show that surfaces covered by boulders and coarse terrain are frequent on such bodies. Regolith grain sizes have distributions on approximately mm and cm scales, and the behavior of such large grains…
Conditions for regolith landslides to occur on spinning, gravitating spheroidal asteroids and their aftermath are studied. These conditions are developed by application of classical granular mechanics stability analysis to the asteroid…
We explore the hypothesis that, due to small van der Waals forces between constituent grains, small rubble pile asteroids have a small but non-zero cohesive strength. The nature of this model predicts that the cohesive strength should be…
This paper studies the long-term migration of disturbed regolith materials on the surface of Solar System small bodies from the viewpoint of nonlinear dynamics. We propose an approximation model for secular mass movement, which combines the…
The cohesion of particles has a significant effect on the properties of small bodies. In this study, we measured in open air, the cohesive forces of tens of micron-sized irregularly shaped meteorite, silica sand, glass powder, and spherical…
There is a correlation between the components of the YORP effect of most asteroids, which drives the obliquity and spin rate of the affected bodies in a consistent pattern. This allows for a clear and unambiguous picture for how the spin…
We aim to understand how landslides affect the shape and rotational motion of small rubble planetary bodies. We limit ourselves to axisymmetric global landslides, and take the primordial shape of the body to also be axisymmetric. The…
We present a framework to study regolith segregation on rubble-pile asteroids (self-gravitating granular aggregates) due to seismic shaking induced by impacts sustained during their lifetimes. We first relate the amplitude and frequency of…
Asteroid surfaces are subjected to mechanical weathering processes that result in the development and evolution of regolith. Two proposed mechanisms--impact bombardment and thermal fatigue--have been proposed as viable and dominant…
The dusty regolith covering the surfaces of asteroids and planetary satellites differs in size, shape, and composition from terrestrial soil particles and is subject to very different environmental conditions. Experimental studies of the…
Seismic shaking is an attractive mechanism to explain the destabilisation of regolith slopes and the regolith migration found on the surfaces of asteroids (Richardson et al. 2004; Miyamoto et al. 2007). Here, we use a continuum mechanics…
Spin off events and impacts can eject boulders from an asteroid surface and rubble pile asteroids can accumulate from debris following a collision between large asteroids. These processes produce a population of gravitational bound objects…
Surface shedding of an asteroid is a failure mode where surface materials fly off due to strong centrifugal forces beyond the critical spin period, while the internal structure does not deform significantly. This paper proposes a possible…
We studied the creep motion of granular materials in a gradient potential field that is created using a slow spin-up experiment device. Natural sand confined in the acrylic box is spun up by a controlled turntable and the surface flows are…
The tangential YORP effect is a radiation pressure torque produced by asymmetric thermal emission by structures on the asteroid surface. As such structures, previous works considered boulders of different shapes lying on the surface of the…
Despite their very low surface gravities, the surfaces of asteroids and comets are covered by granular materials - regolith - that can range from a fine dust to a gravel-like structure of varying depths. Understanding the dynamics of…