arXiv subjects

Carsten Güttler

Publications and source records attributed to Carsten Güttler.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

The stratification of regolith on celestial objects

All atmosphere-less planetary bodies are covered with a dust layer, the so-called regolith, which determines the optical, mechanical and thermal properties of their surface. These properties depend on the regolith material, the size distribution of the particles it consists of, and the porosity to which these particles are packed. We performed experiments in parabolic flights to determine the gravity dependency of the packing density of regolith for solid-particle sizes of 60 $μ$m and 1 mm as well as for 100-250 $μ$m-sized agglomerates of 1.5 $μ$m-sized solid grains. We utilized g-levels between 0.7 m s$^{-2}$ and 18 m s$^{-2}$ and completed our measurements with experiments under normal gravity conditions. Based on previous experimental and theoretical literature and supported by our new experiments, we developed an analytical model to calculate the regolith stratification of celestial rocky and icy bodies and estimated the mechanical yields of the regolith under the weight of an astronaut and a spacecraft resting on these objects.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2024

Diurnal ejection of boulder clusters on comet 67P lasting beyond 3 AU

Ejection of large boulder-like debris is a vigorous form of cometary activity that is unlikely induced by water ice out-gassing alone but rather associated with the sublimation of super-volatile ices. Though perceived on several comets, actual pattern and mechanism of such activity are still unclear. Here we report on a specialized observation of ejections of decimeter- to meter-sized boulders on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko outbound between 2.5 and 3.3 AU from the Sun. With a common source region, these events recurred in local morning. The boulders of elongated shapes were ejected in clusters at low inclinations comparable to the solar elevation below 40 degrees at the time. We show that these chunks could be propelled by the surrounding, asymmetric gas field that produced a distinct lateral acceleration. Possibly both water and carbon dioxide have contributed to their mobilization, while the season and local topography are among deciding factors. The mechanisms for sustaining regular activity of comets at large heliocentric distances are likely more diverse and intricate than previously thought.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2023

Simulation and experiment of gas diffusion in a granular bed

The diffusion of gas through porous material is important to understand the physical processes underlying cometary activity. We study the diffusion of a rarefied gas (Knudsen regime) through a packed bed of monodisperse spheres via experiments and numerical modelling, providing an absolute value of the diffusion coefficient and compare it to published analytical models. The experiments are designed to be directly comparable to numerical simulations, by using precision steel beads, simple geometries, and a trade-off of the sample size between small boundary effects and efficient computation. For direct comparison, the diffusion coefficient is determined in Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) simulations, yielding a good match with experiments. This model is further-on used on a microscopic scale, which cannot be studied in experiments, to determine the mean path of gas molecules and its distribution, and compare it against an analytical model. Scaling with sample properties (particle size, porosity) and gas properties (molecular mass, temperature) is consistent with analytical models. As predicted by these, results are very sensitive on sample porosity and we find that a tortuosity $q(\varepsilon)$ depending linearly on the porosity $\varepsilon$ can well reconcile the analytical model with experiments and simulations. Mean paths of molecules are close to those described in the literature, but their distribution deviates from the expectation for small path lengths. The provided diffusion coefficients and scaling laws are directly applicable to thermophysical models of idealised cometary material.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2022

CO2-driven surface changes in the Hapi region on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Between 2014 December 31 and 2015 March 17, the OSIRIS cameras on Rosetta documented the growth of a 140m wide and 0.5m deep depression in the Hapi region on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This shallow pit is one of several that later formed elsewhere on the comet, all in smooth terrain that primarily is the result of airfall of coma particles. We have compiled observations of this region in Hapi by the microwave instrument MIRO on Rosetta, acquired during October and November 2014. We use thermophysical and radiative transfer models in order to reproduce the MIRO observations. This allows us to place constraints on the thermal inertia, diffusivity, chemical composition, stratification, extinction coefficients, and scattering properties of the surface material, and how they evolved during the months prior to pit formation. The results are placed in context through long-term comet nucleus evolution modelling. We propose that: 1) MIRO observes signatures that are consistent with a solid-state greenhouse effect in airfall material; 2) CO2 ice is sufficiently close to the surface to have a measurable effect on MIRO antenna temperatures, and likely is responsible for the pit formation in Hapi observed by OSIRIS; 3) the pressure at the CO2 sublimation front is sufficiently strong to expel dust and water ice outwards, and to compress comet material inwards, thereby causing the near-surface compaction observed by CONSERT, SESAME, and groundbased radar, manifested as the "consolidated terrain" texture observed by OSIRIS.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2017

Centrifugal Experiments with Simulated Regolith:Effects of Gravity, Size Distribution, and Particle Shape on Porosity

Porosity is a key characteristic of the regolith on the surface of small bodies. The porosity of the regolith on the surface of asteroids is changed by applied pressure, and the relationship between pressure and porosity depends on the particle properties of the regolith. We performed compression measurements on samples of different materials, particle size distributions, and shapes to examine the relationship between particle size and pressure required for compression. We used a centrifuge and a compression testing machine for the experiments. The applied pressure for the centrifuge and the compression testing machine experiments ranged from 10^2 to 5x10^3 Pa and from 10^4 to 5x10^6 Pa, respectively. The initial porosity before compression was generally higher for samples with smaller particles and narrower particle size distributions. A sample compressed more easily when it consisted of smaller particles, probably due to smaller frictional forces between particles. We estimated the porosity of granular asteroids based on the results of our experiments. The estimated porosity at the center of a homogeneous asteroid with a radius of 50 km is 0.43. This porosity is typical of the porosity of asteroids of similar size.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2013

Normal Collisions of Spheres: A Literature Survey on Available Experiments

The central collision between two solid spheres or the normal collision between a sphere and a plate are important to understand in detail before studying more complex particle interactions. Models exist to describe this basic problem but are not always consistent with available experiments. An interesting benchmark to compare models and experiments is the relation between the normal coefficient of restitution e and the incident velocity v. In order to draw a broad comparison between experiments and models (Krijt, S., Güttler, C., Heißelmann, D., Tielens, A.G.G.M., Dominik, C., Energy dissipation in head-on collisions of spheres, submitted), we provide in this article an overview on the literature describing experiments on normal collisions, preferably providing data on e(v). We will briefly summarize our expectation on this relation according to an established collision model in order to classify these experiments. We will then provide an overview on experimental techniques, which we found in the summarized articles, as well as a listing of all experiments along with a description of the main features of these. The raw data on e(v) of the listed experiments were digitized and are provided with this article.

physics.class-ph↗

arXiv2013

Granular convection and the Brazil nut effect in reduced gravity

We present laboratory experiments of a vertically vibrated granular medium consisting of 1 mm diameter glass beads with embedded 8 mm diameter intruder glass beads. The experiments were performed in the laboratory as well as in a parabolic flight under reduced-gravity conditions (on Martian and Lunar gravity levels). We measured the mean rise velocity of the large glass beads and present its dependence on the fill height of the sample containers, the excitation acceleration, and the ambient gravity level. We find that the rise velocity scales in the same manner for all three gravity regimes and roughly linearly with gravity.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2013

Free Collisions in a Microgravity Many-Particle Experiment III: The Collision Behavior of sub-Millimeter-Sized Dust Aggregates

We conducted micro-gravity experiments to study the outcome of collisions between sub-mm-sized dust agglomerates consisting of μm-sized SiO2 monomer grains at velocities of several cm/s. Prior to the experiments, we used X-ray computer tomography (nano-CT) imaging to study the internal structure of these dust agglomerates and found no rim compaction so that their collision behavior is not governed by preparation-caused artefacts. We found that collisions between these dust aggregates can lead either to sticking or to bouncing, depending mostly on the impact velocity. While previous collision models derived the transition between both regimes from contact physics, we used the available empirical data from these and earlier experiments to derive a power law relation between dust-aggregate mass and impact velocity for the threshold between the two collision outcomes. In agreement with earlier experiments, we show that the transition between both regimes is not sharp, but follows a shallower power law than predicted by previous models (Güttler et al. 2010). Furthermore, we find that sticking between dust aggregates can lead to the formation of larger structures. Collisions between aggregates-of-aggregates can lead to growth at higher velocities than homogeneous dust agglomerates.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2012

Cratering Experiments on the Self Armoring of Coarse-Grained Granular Targets

Recently published crater statistics on the small asteroids 25143 Itokawa and 433 Eros show a significant depletion of craters below approx. 100 m in diameter. Possible mechanisms that were brought up to explain this lack of craters were seismic crater erasure and self armoring of a coarse, boulder covered asteroid surface. While seismic shaking has been studied in this context, the concept of armoring lacks a deeper inspection and an experimental ground truth. We therefore present cratering experiments of glass bead projectiles impacting into granular glass bead targets, where the grain sizes of projectile and target are in a similar range. The impact velocities are in the range of 200 to 300 m/s. We find that craters become fainter and irregular shaped as soon as the target grains are larger than the projectile sizes and that granular craters rarely form when the size ratio between projectile and target grain is around 1:10 or smaller. In that case, we observe a formation of a strength determined crater in the first struck target grain instead. We present a simple model based on the transfer of momentum from the projectile to this first target grain, which is capable to explain our results with only a single free parameter, which is moreover well determined by previous experiments. Based on estimates of typical projectile size and boulder size on Itokawa and Eros, given that our results are representative also for km/s impact velocities, armoring should play an important role for their evolution.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2012

Planetesimal formation by sweep-up: How the bouncing barrier can be beneficial to growth

The formation of planetesimals is often accredited to collisional sticking of dust grains. The exact process is unknown, as collisions between larger aggregates tend to lead to fragmentation or bouncing rather than sticking. Recent laboratory experiments have however made great progress in the understanding and mapping of the complex physics involved in dust collisions. We want to study the possibility of planetesimal formation using the results from the latest laboratory experiments, particularly by including the fragmentation with mass transfer effect, which might lead to growth even at high impact velocities. We present a new experimentally and physically motivated dust collision model capable of predicting the outcome of a collision between two particles of arbitrary masses and velocities. It is used together with a continuum dust-size evolution code that is both fast in terms of execution time and able to resolve the dust well at all sizes, allowing for all types of interactions to be studied without biases. We find that for the general dust population, bouncing collisions prevent the growth above millimeter-sizes. However, if a small number of cm-sized particles are introduced, for example due to vertical mixing or radial drift, they can act as a catalyst and start to sweep up the smaller particles. At a distance of 3 AU, 100-meter-sized bodies are formed on a timescale of 1 Myr. We conclude that direct growth of planetesimals might be a possibility thanks to a combination of the existence of a bouncing barrier and the fragmentation with mass transfer effect. The bouncing barrier is here even beneficial, as it prevents the growth of too many large particles that would otherwise only fragment among each other, and creates a reservoir of small particles that can be swept up by larger bodies. However, for this process to work, a few seeds of cm in size or larger have to be introduced.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2011

Free Collisions in a Microgravity Many-Particle Experiment. II. The Collision Dynamics of Dust-Coated Chondrules

The formation of planetesimals in the early Solar System is hardly understood, and in particular the growth of dust aggregates above millimeter sizes has recently turned out to be a difficult task in our understanding [Zsom et al. 2010, A&A, 513, A57]. Laboratory experiments have shown that dust aggregates of these sizes stick to one another only at unreasonably low velocities. However, in the protoplanetary disk, millimeter-sized particles are known to have been ubiquitous. One can find relics of them in the form of solid chondrules as the main constituent of chondrites. Most of these chondrules were found to feature a fine-grained rim, which is hypothesized to have formed from accreting dust grains in the solar nebula. To study the influence of these dust-coated chondrules on the formation of chondrites and possibly planetesimals, we conducted collision experiments between millimeter-sized, dust-coated chondrule analogs at velocities of a few cm/s. For 2 and 3 mm diameter chondrule analogs covered by dusty rims of a volume filling factor of 0.18 and 0.35-0.58, we found sticking velocities of a few cm/s. This velocity is higher than the sticking velocity of dust aggregates of the same size. We therefore conclude that chondrules may be an important step towards a deeper understanding of the collisional growth of larger bodies. Moreover, we analyzed the collision behavior in an ensemble of dust aggregates and non-coated chondrule analogs. While neither the dust aggregates nor the solid chondrule analogs show sticking in collisions among their species, we found an enhanced sicking efficiency in collisions between the two constituents, which leads us to the conjecture that chondrules might act as "catalyzers" for the growth of larger bodies in the young Solar System.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2011

Free Collisions in a Microgravity Many-Particle Experiment. I. Dust Aggregate Sticking at Low Velocities

Over the past years the processes involved in the growth of planetesimals have extensively been studied in the laboratory. Based on these experiments, a dust-aggregate collision model was developed upon which computer simulations were based to evaluate how big protoplanetary dust aggregates can grow and to analyze which kinds of collisions are relevant in the solar nebula and are worth further studies in the laboratory. The sticking threshold velocity of millimeter-sized dust aggregates is such a critical value that had so far only theoretically been derived, as the relevant velocities could not be reached in the laboratory. We developed a microgravity experiment that allows us for the first time to study free collisions of mm-sized dust aggregates down to velocities of ~0.1 cm/s to assess this part of the protoplanetary dust evolution model. Here, we present the results of 125 free collisions between dust aggregates of 0.5 to 2 mm diameter. Seven collisions with velocities between 0.2 and 3 cm/s led to sticking, suggesting a transition from perfect sticking to perfect bouncing with a certain sticking probability instead of a sharp velocity threshold. We developed a model to explain the physical processes involved in dust-aggregate sticking, derived dynamic material properties of the dust aggregates from the results of the collisions, and deduced the velocity below which aggregates always stick. For millimeter-sized porous dust aggregates this velocity is 8e-5 m/s.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2011

Low-velocity collisions of centimeter-sized dust aggregates

Collisions between centimeter- to decimeter-sized dusty bodies are important to understand the mechanisms leading to the formation of planetesimals. We thus performed laboratory experiments to study the collisional behavior of dust aggregates in this size range at velocities below and around the fragmentation threshold. We developed two independent experimental setups with the same goal to study the effects of bouncing, fragmentation, and mass transfer in free particle-particle collisions. The first setup is an evacuated drop tower with a free-fall height of 1.5 m, providing us with 0.56 s of microgravity time so that we observed collisions with velocities between 8 mm/s and 2 m/s. The second setup is designed to study the effect of partial fragmentation (when only one of the two aggregates is destroyed) and mass transfer in more detail. It allows for the measurement of the accretion efficiency as the samples are safely recovered after the encounter. Our results are that for very low velocities we found bouncing as could be expected while the fragmentation velocity of 20 cm/s was significantly lower than expected. We present the critical energy for disruptive collisions Q*, which showed up to be at least two orders of magnitude lower than previous experiments in the literature. In the wide range between bouncing and disruptive collisions, only one of the samples fragmented in the encounter while the other gained mass. The accretion efficiency in the order of a few percent of the particle's mass is depending on the impact velocity and the sample porosity. Our results will have consequences for dust evolution models in protoplanetary disks as well as for the strength of large, porous planetesimal bodies.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2010

The Physics of Protoplanetesimal Dust Agglomerates. V. Multiple Impacts of Dusty Agglomerates at Velocities Above the Fragmentation Threshold

In the last years, experiments have shown that collisions above the fragmentation threshold velocity are a potentially important growth process for protoplanatary dust aggregates. To obtain deeper understanding of this process, we performed laboratory and drop-tower experiments to study multiple impacts of small, porous dust-aggregate projectiles onto sintered dust targets. Projectile and target consisted of 1.5 micron monodisperse, spherical SiO2 monomers with volume filling factors of 0.15 (projectiles) and 0.45 (targets). The projectiles were accelerated by a solenoid magnet and combined with a magazine with which 25 impacts onto the same spot on the target could be performed in vacuum. We measured the mass-accretion efficiency and the volume filling factor for different impact velocities between 1.5 and 6.0 m/s. The experiments at the lowest impact speeds were performed in the Bremen drop-tower under microgravity conditions. Within this velocity range we found a linear increase of the accretion efficiency with increasing velocity. In the laboratory experiments, the accretion efficiency increases from 0.12 to 0.21 in units of the projectile mass. The recorded images of the impacts showed that the mass transfer from the projectile to the target leads to the growth of a conical structure on the target. From the images we also measured the volume filling factors of the grown structures, which ranged from 0.15 (uncompacted) to 0.40 (significantly compacted) with increasing impact speed. These results augment our knowledge of the aggregate growth in protoplanetary disks and should be taken into account for future models of protoplanetary dust growth.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2010

Numerical Simulations of Highly Porous Dust Aggregates in the Low-Velocity Collision Regime

A highly favoured mechanism of planetesimal formation is collisional growth. Single dust grains, which follow gas flows in the protoplanetary disc, hit each other, stick due to van der Waals forces and form fluffy aggregates up to centimetre size. The mechanism of further growth is unclear since the outcome of aggregate collisions in the relevant velocity and size regime cannot be investigated in the laboratory under protoplanetary disc conditions. Realistic statistics of the result of dust aggregate collisions beyond decimetre size is missing for a deeper understanding of planetary growth. Joining experimental and numerical efforts we want to calibrate and validate a computer program that is capable of a correct simulation of the macroscopic behaviour of highly porous dust aggregates. After testing its numerical limitations thoroughly we will check the program especially for a realistic reproduction of various benchmark experiments. We adopt the smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) numerical scheme with extensions for the simulation of solid bodies and a modified version of the Sirono porosity model. Experimentally measured macroscopic material properties of silica dust are implemented. We calibrate and test for the compressive strength relation and the bulk modulus. SPH has already proven to be a suitable tool to simulate collisions at rather high velocities. In this work we demonstrate that its area of application can not only be extended to low-velocity experiments and collisions. It can also be used to simulate the behaviour of highly porous objects in this velocity regime to a very high accuracy.The result of the calibration process in this work is an SPH code that can be utilised to investigate the collisional outcome of porous dust in the low-velocity regime.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2009

The outcome of protoplanetary dust growth: pebbles, boulders, or planetesimals? I. Mapping the zoo of laboratory collision experiments

The growth processes from protoplanetary dust to planetesimals are not fully understood. Laboratory experiments and theoretical models have shown that collisions among the dust aggregates can lead to sticking, bouncing, and fragmentation. However, no systematic study on the collisional outcome of protoplanetary dust has been performed so far so that a physical model of the dust evolution in protoplanetary disks is still missing. We intend to map the parameter space for the collisional interaction of arbitrarily porous dust aggregates. This parameter space encompasses the dust-aggregate masses, their porosities and the collision velocity. With such a complete mapping of the collisional outcomes of protoplanetary dust aggregates, it will be possible to follow the collisional evolution of dust in a protoplanetary disk environment. We use literature data, perform own laboratory experiments, and apply simple physical models to get a complete picture of the collisional interaction of protoplanetary dust aggregates. In our study, we found four different types of sticking, two types of bouncing, and three types of fragmentation as possible outcomes in collisions among protoplanetary dust aggregates. We distinguish between eight combinations of porosity and mass ratio. For each of these cases, we present a complete collision model for dust-aggregate masses between 10^-12 and 10^2 g and collision velocities in the range 10^-4 to 10^4 cm/s for arbitrary porosities. This model comprises the collisional outcome, the mass(es) of the resulting aggregate(s) and their porosities. We present the first complete collision model for protoplanetary dust. This collision model can be used for the determination of the dust-growth rate in protoplanetary disks.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2009

The Physics of Protoplanetesimal Dust Agglomerates. IV. Towards a Dynamical Collision Model

Recent years have shown many advances in our knowledge of the collisional evolution of protoplanetary dust. Based on a variety of dust-collision experiments in the laboratory, our view of the growth of dust aggregates in protoplanetary disks is now supported by a deeper understanding of the physics involved in the interaction between dust agglomerates. However, the parameter space, which determines the collisional outcome, is huge and sometimes inaccessible to laboratory experiments. Very large or fluffy dust aggregates and extremely low collision velocities are beyond the boundary of today's laboratories. It is therefore desirable to augment our empirical knowledge of dust-collision physics with a numerical method to treat arbitrary aggregate sizes, porosities and collision velocities. In this article, we implement experimentally-determined material parameters of highly porous dust aggregates into a Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code, in particular an omnidirectional compressive-strength and a tensile-strength relation. We also give a prescription of calibrating the SPH code with compression and low-velocity impact experiments. In the process of calibration, we developed a dynamic compressive-strength relation and estimated a relation for the shear strength. Finally, we defined and performed a series of benchmark tests and found the agreement between experimental results and numerical simulations to be very satisfactory. SPH codes have been used in the past to study collisions at rather high velocities. At the end of this work, we show examples of future applications in the low-velocity regime of collisional evolution.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2009

Towards a Dynamical Collision Model of Highly Porous Dust Aggregates

In the recent years we have performed various experiments on the collision dynamics of highly porous dust aggregates and although we now have a comprehensive picture of the micromechanics of those aggregates, the macroscopic understanding is still lacking. We are therefore developing a mechanical model to describe dust aggregate collisions with macroscopic parameters like tensile strength, compressive strength and shear strength. For one well defined dust sample material, the tensile and compressive strength were measured in a static experiment and implemented in a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code. A laboratory experiment was designed to compare the laboratory results with the results of the SPH simulation. In this experiment, a mm-sized glass bead is dropped into a cm-sized dust aggregate with the previously measured strength parameters. We determine the deceleration of the glass bead by high-speed imaging and the compression of the dust aggregate by x-ray micro-tomography. The measured penetration depth, stopping time and compaction under the glass bead are utilized to calibrate and test the SPH code. We find that the statically measured compressive strength curve is only applicable if we adjust it to the dynamic situation with a 'softness' parameter. After determining this parameter, the SPH code is capable of reproducing experimental results, which have not been used for the calibration before.

astro-ph.EP↗