https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202124913001
Seismic waves in the asteroid environment
1
Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research, University of Colorado Boulder, 3775 Discovery Dr, Boulder, CO 80303, USA
2
Ann & H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, 3775 Discovery Dr, Boulder, CO 80303, USA
* e-mail: diego.sanchez-lana@colorado.edu
** e-mail: daniel.scheeres@colorado.edu
Published online: 7 June 2021
Through numerical simulations, we investigate impact generated seismic wave transmission in granular media under extremely low pressure. This mimics the conditions in the interior of asteroids and other small planetary bodies. We find a dependency not only on the overburden pressure on the medium, but also on the velocity of the impact that generates the wave. This is, at extremely low values of overburden pressure, the wave speed depends no only on the imposed pressure, but also on the increment in pressure created by the passing of the wave. We study crystalline and random packings and find very similar behaviour though with different wave speeds as expected. We then relate our results to different mission-related events on asteroids.
A video is available at https://doi.org/10.48448/t6r1-mn73
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
