SPH-based simulation of multi-material asteroid collisions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a 3D SPH simulation code for asteroid collisions involving basaltic rock and ice, modeling effects like failure, fragmentation, and merging, validated against existing results and applying real material data.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel 3D SPH simulation framework specifically designed for multi-material asteroid collision analysis, incorporating realistic material failure models.

Findings

Validated the SPH code against previous studies

Simulated collisions using measured Weibull parameters for basalt

Demonstrated effects of brittle failure and fragmentation

Abstract

We give a brief introduction to smoothed particle hydrodynamics methods for continuum mechanics. Specifically, we present our 3D SPH code to simulate and analyze collisions of asteroids consisting of two types of material: basaltic rock and ice. We consider effects like brittle failure, fragmentation, and merging in different impact scenarios. After validating our code against previously published results we present first collision results based on measured values for the Weibull flaw distribution parameters of basalt.