Heterogeneous grain destruction near the Sun

✍ Scribed by T. Mukai

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1984
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 363 KB
• Volume: 30
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1573-0794
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00118096

✦ Synopsis

Catastrophic fracture of heterogeneous grams consisting of refractory matrix and trapped icy inclusions is examined. As such a gram approaches the Sun after release from the comet, the saturation pressure of icy inclusions increases, and finally exceeds the crack-extension-force necessary for onset of unstable fast fracturing. Subsequently a growth of cracks results in a facture of the gram.

The calculation revealed that obsidian and magnetite gram, respectively, of radius 100pm with 10% water-ice inclusions in volume suddenly disrupt near the solar distance of 0.25 AU and of 0.6 AU. Since the small debris of fragmentation comes from the direction of the sun on a relatively higher eccentric orbit, this fragmentation mechanism seems favourable to explain the p-meteoroids observed at 1 AU.