Exploring tidal dissipation in rubble pile binary secondaries using a discrete element model

TL;DR

This study uses a discrete element model to simulate tidal dissipation in rubble pile binary secondaries, revealing significant dissipation and complex dependencies on rotation and topography, with implications for binary asteroid evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel computational approach to simulate tidal dissipation in rubble pile asteroids, providing new quantitative estimates of the dissipation factor Q/k2.

Findings

Q/k2 estimated at ~71.6, lower than previous predictions

Tidal lag angle varies non-classically with topography

Q/k2 depends on the rotation rate of the secondary

Abstract

In this work, models of rubble pile binary secondaries are simulated in different spin states in a system similar in size and scale to Didymos-Dimorphos. The numerical modeling is performed in the N-body Chrono-based software GRAINS, which simulates gravity, contact, and friction forces acting on non-spherical mass elements. Tidal dissipation successfully emerges in the simulations as an aggregate of the effects of inter-element contact and friction across thousands of simulated mass elements. We devise computational techniques for simulating and studying such systems, establishing rigorous numerical procedures for computing tidal quantities of interest. We compute $Q/k_{2} \sim 71.6^{+99.6}_{-43.6}$ for the secondary, smaller than previously predicted ranges $10^{2} < Q/k_{2} < 10^{6}$, and thus a rather dissipative result. From our simulations, we observe non-classical variation of the tidal lag angle with the topographic longitude, and dependence of $Q/k_{2}$ on the rotation rate. Further study is required to see if the enhanced dissipativity holds with other geometries and regolith properties.