Results: Shapes of Impact Outcomes

Abstract

In this chapter, we introduce the results of our simulations that investigate shapes of asteroids formed through various collisions between asteroids. Database of Asteroid Models from Inversion Techniques provides almost all shapes of known asteroids with diameters larger than 100 km. Thus, in our impact simulations, we set radius of target asteroids to 50 km to allow us to directly compare the results of our simulations with the shapes of actual asteroids. We vary impact angles, impact velocities, and ratios of the mass of impactor asteroids to that of target asteroids, and we conduct various impact simulations. As a result, we find that similar-mass and low-velocity impacts produce various shapes including extremely flat and elongated shapes. In contrast, high-velocity and destructive impacts mainly produce spherical and bilobed shapes, but they are difficult to produce flat shapes.