Impact fragmentation experiments of basalts and pyrophyllites

Abstract Results of impact fragmentation experiments for basalts and pyrophyllites are reported. Aluminum cylindrical projectiles were impacted on cubic basalt and pyrophyllite targets at velocities of 70 to 990 m/sec. The targets and projectiles were 20 g to 3.3 kg and 2 to 20 g in weight respectively. Weights of the fragments produced by impacts were measured and the size distributions of fragments were examined. Data of the largest fragment mass (mL) normalized to the original target mass (Mt), mL/Mt, correlate better with the nondimensional impact stress, PI, a new scaling parameter introduced by H. Mizutani, Y. Takagi, and S. Kawakami (1984, in preparation) than the conventional projectile's kinetic energy per unit target mass, E/Mt, used in the previous studies. All the mL/Mt data for basalts obtained in the present study are summarized by mL/Mt = 2.95 × 10−2PI−1 where PI = P0L3/YR3, P0 = peak shock pressure, L = projectile size, R = target size and Y = material strength of target. For aluminum targets, however, the mL/Mt is 2.5 orders of magnitude larger than that for brittle targets at impacts with the same PI. Size distributions of fragments expressed in a log N - log (m/Mt) diagram divided into three regimes bounded by two inflection points. In each regime the curve is expressed by N (> m M t ) = A ( m M t ) −a . The slopes, a, of the log N - log ( m M t ) curves in the regimes of a large and a medium size range are positively correlated with the nondimensional impact stress, PI, and expressed as a = C3 + a3log PI. The slopes, a, in the smallest size range are, on the other hand, nearly constant and have values of 0.5 to 0.7 ( 1 2 − 2 3 ) . Present results indicate that the impact fragmentation is scaled well by the new scaling parameter, PI, of Mizutani, Takagi, and Kawakami and that the present experimental data may shed new light on planetary impact processes.