The role of pebble fragmentation in planetesimal formation I. Experimental study

Abstract

Previous work on protoplanetary dust growth shows halt at centimeter sizes owing to the occurrence of bouncing at velocities of $\ge$ 0.1 $m{s}^{-1}$ and fragmentation at velocities $\ge$ 1 $m{s}^{-1}$. To overcome these barriers, spatial concentration of cm-sized dust pebbles and subsequent gravitational collapse have been proposed. However, numerical investigations have shown that dust aggregates may undergo fragmentation during the gravitational collapse phase. This fragmentation in turn changes the size distribution of the solids and thus must be taken into account in order to understand the properties of the planetesimals that form. To explore the fate of dust pebbles undergoing fragmenting collisions, we conducted laboratory experiments on dust-aggregate collisions with a focus on establishing a collision model for this stage of planetesimal formation. In our experiments, we analysed collisions of dust aggregates with masses between 1.4 g and 180 g, mass ratios between target and projectile from 125 to 1 at a fixed porosity of 65%, within the velocity range of 1.5 $-$ 8.7 $m{s}^{-1}$ , at low atmospheric pressure of $\sim 10^{-3}$ mbar and in free-fall conditions. We derived the mass of the largest fragment, the fragment size/mass distribution, and the efficiency of mass transfer as a function of collision velocity and projectile/target aggregate size. Moreover, we give recipes for an easy-to-use fragmentation and mass-transfer model for further use in modeling work. In a companion paper, we utilize the experimental findings and the derived dust-aggregate collision model to investigate the fate of dust pebbles during gravitational collapse.

References in corpus (25)

• Rapid planetesimal formation in turbulent circumstellar discs
• Streaming Instabilities in Protoplanetary Disks
• The outcome of protoplanetary dust growth: pebbles, boulders, or planetesimals? II. Introducing the bouncing barrier
• The outcome of protoplanetary dust growth: pebbles, boulders, or planetesimals? I. Mapping the zoo of laboratory collision experiments
• Rapid Coagulation of Porous Dust Aggregates Outside the Snow Line: A Pathway to Successful Icy Planetesimal Formation
• Particle Clumping and Planetesimal Formation Depend Strongly on Metallicity
• Dynamics of Solids in the Midplane of Protoplanetary Disks: Implications for Planetesimal Formation
• How to form planetesimals from mm-sized chondrules and chondrule aggregates
• Planetesimal formation by sweep-up: How the bouncing barrier can be beneficial to growth
• Dust release and tensile strength of the non-volatile layer of cometary nuclei
• Free Collisions in a Microgravity Many-Particle Experiment. I. Dust Aggregate Sticking at Low Velocities
• Adding particle collisions to the formation of asteroids and Kuiper belt objects via streaming instabilities
• Breaking through: The effects of a velocity distribution on barriers to dust growth
• The Physics of Protoplanetesimal Dust Agglomerates. III. Compaction in Multiple Collisions
• From dust to planetesimals: an improved model for collisional growth in protoplanetary disks
• High Velocity Dust Collisions: Forming Planetesimals in a Fragmentation Cascade with Final Accretion
• Low-velocity collisions of centimeter-sized dust aggregates
• Formation of pebble-pile planetesimals
• The Physics of Protoplanetesimal Dust Agglomerates. Vi. Erosion of Large Aggregates as a Source of Micrometer-Sized Particles
• Porosities of Protoplanetary Dust Agglomerates from Collision Experiments
• The Physics of Protoplanetesimal Dust Agglomerates. V. Multiple Impacts of Dusty Agglomerates at Velocities Above the Fragmentation Threshold
• The physics of protoplanetesimal dust agglomerates. VII The low-velocity collision behavior of large dust agglomerates
• Macroscopic Dust in Protoplanetary Disks - From Growth to Destruction
• Free Collisions in a Microgravity Many-Particle Experiment. II. The Collision Dynamics of Dust-Coated Chondrules
• Colliding Decimetre Dust

Cited by in corpus (28)

• Evidence for the formation of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko through gravitational collapse of a bound clump of pebbles
• Dust evolution in protoplanetary discs and the formation of planetesimals. What have we learned from laboratory experiments?
• Streaming Instability with Multiple Dust Species: I. Favourable Conditions for the Linear Growth
• Debris Disc Constraints on Planetesimal Formation
• Porous Dust Particles in Protoplanetary Disks: Application to the HL Tau Disk
• Pebble drift and planetesimal formation in protoplanetary discs with embedded planets
• Dust evolution and satellitesimal formation in circumplanetary disks
• Formation of Comets
• The role of pebble fragmentation in planetesimal formation II. Numerical simulations
• Gravitoviscous protoplanetary disks with a dust component. III. Evolution of gas, dust, and pebbles
• Learning about comets from the study of mass distributions and fluxes of meteoroid streams
• Radially resolved simulations of collapsing pebble clouds in protoplanetary discs
• The Physics of Protoplanetesimal Dust Agglomerates. X. Mechanical properties of dust aggregates probed by a solid-projectile impact
• Fragmentation with Discontinuous Galerkin schemes: Non-linear fragmentation
• Close-in Super-Earths: The first and the last stages of planet formation in an MRI-accreting disc
• Formation of pebbles in (gravito-)viscous protoplanetary disks with various turbulent strengths
• Impact of planetesimal eccentricities and material strength on the appearance of eccentric debris disks
• Experiments on cometary activity: ejection of dust aggregates from a sublimating water-ice surface
• The tensile strength of compressed dust samples and the catastrophic disruption threshold of pre-planetary matter
• Ring dynamics around an oblate body with an inclined satellite: The case of Haumea
• Transport, destruction and growth of pebbles in the gas envelope of a protoplanet
• MRI-active inner regions of protoplanetary discs. II. Dependence on dust, disc and stellar parameters
• Erosion of planetesimals by gas flow
• Planetesimal fragmentation and giant planet formation II: dependencies with planetesimal relative velocities and compositions
• Observation of aerodynamic instability in the flow of a particle stream in a dilute gas
• TEMPus VoLA: the Timed Epstein Multi-pressure Vessel at Low Accelerations
• Super-Earth formation in systems with cold giants
• Gas permeability and mechanical properties of dust grain aggregates at hyper- and zero-gravity