Large-Scale Experiments to Determining Scaling Laws for Coefficient of Restitution Between Rocky Bodies

Details Large-Scale Experiments to Determining Scaling Laws for Coefficient of Restitution Between Rocky Bodies Large-Scale Experiments to Determining Scaling Laws for Coefficient of Restitution Between Rocky Bodies

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.2712d&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #27.12

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We conducted experiments to measure the coefficient of restitution for low-speed impacts between meter-scale rocky bodies. These data, the first gathered at these size scales to our knowledge, will allow us to establish scaling laws for low-speed collisions between rocky bodies that can then be reasonably extrapolated to the 10-100-m size scales and 1-10 m/s impact speeds being modeled for applications to the collisional and dynamical evolution of planetary ring systems, to planetesimal accretion, and to the outcomes of disruptive asteroid collisions.
Two 1-meter diameter, 3000 pound granite spheres were suspended pendulum style between two 40-ton cranes. Cable pullers were used to displace the spheres from their rest positions just barely in contact with each other. For the first set of runs, we displaced only one sphere and let it impact the other, undisplaced, sphere, slowly increasing the displacement of the single sphere from run to run until displacements of over a meter were achieved, yielding impact speeds of order 1 m/s. Subsequent runs in which both spheres were simultaneously displaced yielded impact speeds up to 2 m/s. Additional experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of spin and oblique impacts. We obtained a total of 108 science data runs.
All runs were imaged with HD resolution video to record the raw science data: the ratio of initial sphere displacement and speed before impact to displacement and speed after impact. The video data are being reduced and analyzed to derive the coefficient of restitution as a function of impact speed. Subjectively, it appears that the coefficient of restitution follows the basic trend observed in laboratory-scale experiments, where coefficient of restitution decreases with increasing impact speed. It also appears that the efficiency of spin transfer is much greater for low impact speeds.

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