The Experimental and Theoretical Basis for Studying Collisional Disruption in the Solar System

Abstract

Collisional catastrophic disruption has played a major role in shaping the population of asteroids and Kuiper belt objects over solar system history. This process continues to the present time and is responsible for launching fragments on their trip from the asteroid belt or the Kuiper belt to the inner solar system and Earth where they manifest themselves as meteors, comets and Near-Earth asteroids. This chapter describes our understanding of the collisional. disruption process resulting from laboratory impact experiments, numerical models for extrapolating laboratory results to asteroid sized bodies and simulations of the collisional evolution of small body populations. Included are numerical recipes for calculating the outcome of energetic collisions between bodies of arbitrary size that can be used to model collisional fragmentation processes.