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P. Michel (Cote d'Azur Observatory), W. Benz (University of Bern), D.C. Richardson (University of Maryland)
Recent simulations of asteroid break-ups, including both the fragmentation of the parent body and the gravitational interactions of the fragments, have allowed to reproduced successfully the main properties of asteroid families formed in different regimes of impact energy. Here, using the same kind of simulations, we concentrate on a single regime of impact energy, the so-called catastrophic threshold usually designated by Qcrit, which results in the escape of half of the target's mass. Considering a wide range of diameter values and two kinds of internal structures of the parent body, monolithic and pre-shattered, we analyse their potential influences on the value of Qcrit and on the collisional outcome limited here to the fragment size and ejection speed distributions, which are the main outcome properties used by collisional models to study the evolutions of the different populations of small bodies.
For all the considered diameters and the two internal structures of the parent body, we confirm that the process of gravitational reaccumulation is at the origin of the largest remnant's mass. We then find that, for a given diameter of the parent body, the impact energy corresponding to the catastrophic disruption threshold is highly dependent on the internal structure of the parent body. In particular, a pre-shattered parent body containing only damaged zones but no macroscopic voids is easier to disrupt than a monolithic parent body. Other kinds of internal properties that can also characterize small bodies in real populations will be investigated in a future work.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: michel@obs-nice.fr
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.