Ejecta Speed with the Projectile Velocity less than 2 km/s

TL;DR

This paper presents a thermodynamics-based theoretical model for predicting ejecta speed during impact crater formation, applicable to subsonic and supersonic impacts, with potential extension to hypersonic impacts.

Contribution

A novel thermodynamics-based model that predicts ejecta speed independently of impactor parameters, fitting observations across different impact regimes.

Findings

Model accurately fits observed ejecta speeds in subsonic and supersonic impacts.

Ejecta speed can be described with few parameters, simplifying complex impact processes.

Model potentially applicable to hypersonic impacts (>5 km/s).

Abstract

This work is a theoretical study of the speed at which the material of an impacted target is ejected during the formation of an impact crater. Our model, starting from the first principle of thermodynamics, can describes the speed of the ejecta recursing to considerations that include complex process in simple calculations. The fit of the model with observations shows that the many complex details implicit in an impact process could be included in some few parameters. Ejecta speed could be described independent of impactor parameters. The model is compared with subsonic and supersonic speed experiments showing coincidence in several cases. The model works with subsonic and supersonic impacts. We do not compare the model with hypersonic impacts (> 5 km/s), however, as the model derivation no depends on the impactor velocity it is likely that also work with this kind of impacts.