Pergamon www.elsevier.nMccatdasr Adv. Space Res. Vol. 23, No. 7, pp. 1319-1323, 1999 0 1999 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in &eat Britain 0273-I 177/!39 $20.00 + 0.00 PII: SO273-1177(99)00043-5 CRATERING OF A COMET K. Jach’, L. Kortas’, J. Leliwa-Kopysty&ki3.4, P. wola&is NUCLEUS BY METEOROIDS M. Morka’, M. Mroczkowski’, R. Panowicz’, R. Swierczyliski’, and ‘Military University of Technology, Kaliskiego 2, 00-908 Warszawa 49, Poland ‘University of Mining and Metalurgy, Al. Micktewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland 3University of Warsaw, Institute of Geophysics, Pasteura 7, 02-093 Warszawa, Poland 4Space Research Center of PAN, Bartycti I8A, 00-716 Warszawa, Poland ‘Warsaw University of Technology, Institute of Heat Engineering, Nowowiejska 25/29, 00-665 Warszawa, Poland ABSTRACT The two-dimensional axisymmetric hydrocode model of free particles is applied to the calculation of response of a comet nucleus to a meteorite impact. The nucleus is assumed to be spherical with a radius of 1 km. It is composed of a porous granular mixture of water ice and of mineral. Initial temperature is 50 K. Porosity is v = 0.6 and the mean density is p = 400 kg me3. Impactor radius is equal to 1 m and its mean density is equal to that of the nucleus. Impact velocity is 10 km se’. A normal impact is considered. Particular.forms for the equations of state (EOS) for the real medium (water ice and rock) as well as for an artificial medium of very low-density (40 kg mJ) filling up the voids are used. The cohesion is included in the constitutive model of the constituents. Numerical modelling provides the time dependent fields of pressure, density, temperature, and particle velocity in the vicinity of an impact point. The evolution of the field of temperature correlated with the function for kinetics of amorphous to crystalline phase transition permits discussion of the impact-induced crystallization of presumably initially amorphous ice. 0 1999 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. MODEL OF COMET NUCLEUS There exists a large diversity in details concerning modeling of comet nuclei. However, the dominating abundance of water ice as well as the high porosity of nuclei are well established. Other features are more or less controversial. Among them is the state of the ice: amorphous or crystalline, see e.g. Rickman (199 1) and Kauchi et al. (1994). The last authors concluded: “Icy grains which formed the Uranian and Neptunian satellites and comets were initially amorphous, if they were formed from the icy grains preserved from the molecular cloud stage”. The form of ice depends on temperature of formation of a comet nucleus, on contents of radioactive nuclei including short lived Al% (PriahGk et al. 1987), on history of a comet from formation epoch till the recent time, and on actual properties of comet’s orbit, in particular on perihelion distances. Intrinsic radioactivity, if sufficiently intense, can heat a presumably amorphous ice and transform it to the crystalline form. Energy of solar radiation or accumulated energy of many impacts can transform ice from amorphous to crystalline form in a layer spreading downward from the surface level to a certain depth. Study of impact induced phase transition from amorphous to crystalline phase of water ice is one of the goals of this work. This phase transition driven by solar flux of energy incident on comet surface was recently studied by Podolak and Prialnik ( 1996). We suppose that the grains of water ice and of mineral as well as the voids are randomly mixed. They form the nucleus that is statistically or “macroscopically” uniform, Figure 1. However, our two-dimensional (2D) geometry requires axial symmetry: the z-axis follows the direction of impactor movement and is perpendicular to the target; it is directed downward into the nucleus, with z = 0 at the surface. In the 2D case the grains of ice and those of rock as 1319