Engineering topics

Paolicchi, Paolo

Publications and source records attributed to Paolicchi, Paolo.

3 records

NASA NTRS1989

Asteroid families - Physical properties and evolution

Asteroid families are considered to be fragments from collisional destruction of precursor bodies. However, results available on the inferred mineralogy, size distributions, and spins of family members do not confirm the expectations of the traditional model. Only a handful of nearly 100 proposed families, most of them populous, have distributions of inferred mineralogies consistent with simple cosmochemical models for parent bodies. It is suggested that most catastrophic collisions may not result in observable families, but rather in a spray of smaller particles, thus accounting for the small number of confirmed and consistent families, despite evidence for extensive collisional evolution of asteroids.

Chapman, Clark R.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Do asteroids have satellites?

A substantial body of indirect evidence suggests that some asteroids have satellites, although none has been detected unambiguously. Collisions between asteroids provide physically plausible mechanisms for the production of binaries, but these operate with low probability; only a small minority of asteroids are likely to have satellites. The abundance of binary asteorids can constrain the collisional history of the entire belt population. The allowed angular momentum of binaries and their rate of tidal evolution limit separations to no more than a few tens of the primary's radii. Their expected properties are consistent with failure to detect them by current imaging techniques.

Weidenschilling, Stuart J.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Asteroid collisional history - Effects on sizes and spins

The effects of asteroid collisional history on sizes and spins of present-day objects are discussed. Collisional evolution studies indicate that collisions have altered the spin-rates of small bodies, but that the largest asteroids may have retained their primordial rotation rates. Most asteroids larger than 100 km diam have probably been shattered, but have gravitationally recaptured their fragments to form a rubble-pile structure. Large angular momentum asteroids appear to have Maclaurian spheroidal or Jacobi-ellipsoid-like shapes; some of them may have fissioned into binaries. An integrated size and spin collisional evolution model is presented, with two critical parameters: one which determines the spin rates for small fragments resulting from a shattering collision, and the other determines the fraction of impact angular momentum that is retained by the target.

Davis, Donald R.↗