Impact craters formed by spinning granular projectiles.

Abstract

Craters formed by the impact of agglomerated materials are commonly observed in nature, such as asteroids colliding with planets and moons. In this paper, we investigate how the projectile spin and cohesion lead to different crater shapes. For that, we carried out discrete element method computations of spinning granular projectiles impacting onto cohesionless grains for different bonding stresses, initial spins, and initial heights. We found that, as the bonding stresses decrease and the initial spin increases, the projectile's grains spread farther from the collision point, and in consequence, the crater shape becomes flatter, with peaks around the rim and in the center of the crater. Our results shed light on the dispersion of the projectile's material and the different shapes of craters found on Earth and other planetary environments.