The tensile strength of compressed dust samples and the catastrophic disruption threshold of pre-planetary matter

TL;DR

This study investigates the tensile strength of compressed dust samples similar to primitive Solar System material and derives the catastrophic disruption threshold for pre-planetary bodies, aiding planetary formation models.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data on tensile strength of compressed dust and formulates disruption thresholds based on volume filling factor for collision modeling.

Findings

Tensile strength correlates with volume filling factor.

Critical fragmentation strength depends on porosity.

Disruption thresholds are provided for various object sizes.

Abstract

During the planetary formation process, mutual collisions among planetesimals take place, making an impact on their porosity evolution. The outcome of these collisions depends, among other parameters, on the tensile strength of the colliding objects. In the first stage of this work, we performed impact experiments into dust samples, assembled with material analogous to that of the primitive Solar System, to obtain highly compressed samples that represent the porosities measured in chondritic meteorites. In the second stage, we obtained the tensile strengths of the compressed dust samples by the Brazilian Disk Test. We found a correlation between the tensile strength and the volume filling factor of the compressed dust samples and obtained the corresponding critical fragmentation strength in mutual collisions and its dependence on the volume filling factor. Finally, we give prescriptions for the catastrophic disruption threshold as a function of the object size, for different values of the volume filling factor that can be utilized in collisional models.