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Impacts into Ice–Silicate Mixtures: Ejecta Mass and Size Distributions

✍ Scribed by Detlef Koschny; Eberhard Grün


Book ID
102570777
Publisher
Elsevier Science
Year
2001
Tongue
English
Weight
168 KB
Volume
154
Category
Article
ISSN
0019-1035

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✦ Synopsis


We performed impact experiments into ice-silicate surfaces using the plasmadynamic accelerator and the electrothermal accelerator of the Fachbereich Raumfahrt of the Technische Universit ät M ünchen. Projectile velocities varied between 0.9 and 11.4 km/s, and masses between 1.7 • 10 -11 kg and 7.2 • 10 -10 kg at the plasma accelerator and between 1.1 and 3.3 km/s and 6 • 10 -6 kg to 3 • 10 -5 kg at the electrothermal accelerator. Projectile materials were glass at the plasma accelerator, and nylon at the electrothermal accelerator. The kinetic energies ranged over 6 orders of magnitude, from 8.8 • 10 -5 J to 70 J. The target temperature was 250 K ± 5 K. Witness films were used to determine the size and the position of ejecta particles. The ejecta velocities were determined by piezo detectors. The maximum velocities of the ejecta particles observed were in the order of several 100 m/s, independent on the projectile velocity. At about 60 • to 65 • ejection angle to the target surface, velocities were highest (about 700 to 800 m/s), at lower and higher angles, the maximum velocity decreased. The cumulative ejecta mass smaller than a given size follows power laws. Three distinct slopes were observed. For particle sizes smaller than about 10 µm, the average slope was 2.2, for ca. 10 µm to 20 µm, the average slope was 12, and for particles larger than about 20 µm, the average slope was 1.4. The high slope between 10 and 20 µm indicates a comparably high number of particles in this size regime. This is a result of only partially or nondestroyed silicate particles, which originally had a size in this range. The total mass ejected at a given angle can be approximated by a Gaussian distribution with a maximum at ≈70 • to the target surface. We combined the empirically found distributions into a formula which allows the calculation of the mass ejected in a given ejection angle range with a given size range as a function of the projectile and target properties.


📜 SIMILAR VOLUMES


Impacts into Ice–Silicate Mixtures: Crat
✍ Detlef Koschny; Eberhard Grün 📂 Article 📅 2001 🏛 Elsevier Science 🌐 English ⚖ 495 KB

In this and a companion paper, we analyze the strength-dominated impact process into ice-silicate mixtures via experimental techniques, which is important in understanding the evolution of icy satellite surfaces as well as the dynamics of planetary rings. We used the plasmadynamic accelerator (PDA)