Damage in impact fragmentation

TL;DR

This study uses a molecular dynamics model to analyze how impact energy affects damage and fragmentation patterns in a particle disc, revealing logarithmic damage growth with impact energy.

Contribution

It introduces a simple, generic model to quantify damage and fragmentation behavior in impact scenarios, linking energy deposition to damage and fragment distribution.

Findings

Damage increases logarithmically with impact energy.

Total number of fragments grows linearly with damage.

Fragment size distribution follows a power law with an exponent related to damage.

Abstract

Using a simple and generic molecular dynamics model, we study the damage in a disc of interacting particles as the disc fragments upon impact with a wall. The damage, defined as the ratio of the number of bonds broken by the impact to the initial number of bonds, is found to increase logarithmically with the energy deposited in the system. This result implies a linear growth with damage for the total number of fragments and for the power law exponent of the fragment size distribution.