SPH‐based simulation of multi‐material asteroid collisions

We give a brief introduction to smoothed particle hydrodynamics methods for continuum mechanics. Specifically, we present our 3D SPH code to simulate and analyze collisions of asteroids consisting of two types of material: basaltic rock and ice. We consider effects like brittle failure, fragmentation, and merging in different impact scenarios. After validating our code against previously published results we present first collision results based on measured values for the Weibull flaw distribution parameters of basalt. (© 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)