Impacts on regolith and granular media

Regolith and other granular media are of great interest as targets for particle impact research. The electrothermal accelerator facility of the Institute of Astronautics (lrt) of the Technische Universität München (TUM) was upgraded and adapted to facilitate the tests under vacuum condition. Impact velocities between 1 km/s and 4 km/s were obtained. The projectiles were 25 mg Polyethylene or 73 mg Aluminum cylinders. A high speed farming camera from Specialised Imaging was used as the main diagnostic tool for the analysis of the impact process. The first part of the paper describes the electothermal accelerator of the lrt laboratory and the modification of the vacuum chamber. The second part deals with the preparation of the test samples with special focus on the reproducibility of the mechanical properties. Finally, the impact tests are described in detail and preliminary results are given for the crater and ejecta formation process. The final crater features are documented photographically.     «

Regolith and other granular media are of great interest as targets for particle impact research. The electrothermal accelerator facility of the Institute of Astronautics (lrt) of the Technische Universität München (TUM) was upgraded and adapted to facilitate the tests under vacuum condition. Impact velocities between 1 km/s and 4 km/s were obtained. The projectiles were 25 mg Polyethylene or 73 mg Aluminum cylinders. A high speed farming camera from Specialised Imaging was used as the main diagn...     »