Thermal and Mechanical Properties of Carbonaceous Chondrites

Basic data for this project

Description

The research aims at closing the knowledge gap of thermal and mechanical properties of carbonaceous chondrites at high porosities, which is crucial for interpreting the observations recently performed by the Hayabusa-2 and the OSIRES-Rex space missions. Furthermore, we aim at providing a fundamental understanding of the microphysics governing the macroscopic thermal and mechanical properties of carbonaceous material. With in-situ data from space missions and samples of carbonaceous asteroids delivered to Earth (Hayabusa-2, OSIRES-REx), the proposed research is both timely and highly relevant to the fields of meteoritic and asteroid science. It will provide important clues to the formation of minor bodies in the solar system and will yield important input parameters for the simulation of the thermal evolution of planetesimals . In order to achieve these overarching goals, we target the following research objectives:1. Obtain laboratory data on the thermal conductivity and tensile strength as a function of porosity for different meteorite simulants.2. Characterize the amount and shape of porosity in the simulant materials and compare the results with data from selected meteorites.3. Build a numerical model of the thermal and mechanical properties of carbonaceous chondrites using discrete-particle methods and correlate the model findings with experimental results.4. Build a consistent numerical model for the generation of cracks in carbonaceous chondrites.5. Derive scaling laws for the dependency of thermal conductivity and tensile strength on sample porosity, based on the microphysics of grain-to-grain interactions.