Impact experiments of porous gypsum–glass bead mixtures simulating parent bodies of ordinary chondrites: Implications for re-accumulation processes related to rubble-pile formation

Abstract

Laboratory impact experiments were conducted for gypsum–glass bead targets simulating the parent bodies of ordinary chondrites. The effects of the chondrules included in the parent bodies on impact disruption were experimentally investigated in order to determine the impact conditions for the formation of rubble-pile bodies after catastrophic disruption. The targets included glass beads with a diameter ranging from 100 μm to 3 mm and the volume fraction was 0.6, similar to that of ordinary chondrites, which is about 0.65–0.75. Nylon projectiles with diameters of 10 mm and 2 mm were impacted at 60–180 m s −1 by a single-stage gas gun and at 4 km s −1 by a two-stage light gas gun, respectively. The impact strength of the gypsum–glass bead target was found to range from 56 to 116 J kg −1 depending on the glass bead size, and was several times smaller than that of the porous gypsum target, 446 J kg −1 in low-velocity collisions. The impact strengths of the 100 μm bead target and the porous gypsum target strongly depended on the impact velocity: those obtained in high-velocity collisions were several times greater than those obtained in low-velocity collisions. The velocities of fragments ejected from two corners on the impact surface of the target, measured in the center of the mass system, were slightly dependent on the target materials, irrespective of impact velocity. These results suggest that chondrule-including planetesimals (CiPs) can reconstruct rubble-pile bodies in catastrophic disruptions at the size of the planetesimal smaller than that of planetesimals without chondrules.