N-Body Simulations of Planetesimal Evolution:Effect of Varying Impactor Mass Ratio

We present results from direct N-body simulations of collisions between gravitational aggregates of varying size as part of a study to parameterize planetesimal growth in the Solar System. We find that as the ratio of projectile to target mass departs from unity, the impact angle has less effect on the outcome. At the same time, the probability of planetesimal growth increases. Conversely, for a fixed impact energy, collisions between impactors with mass ratio near unity are more dispersive than those with impactor mass ratio far from unity. We derive an expression for the accretion probability as a function of mass ratio. For an average mass ratio of 1 : 5, we find an accretion probability of ∼60% over all impact parameters. We also compute the critical specific dispersal energy QD as a function of projectile size. Extrapolating to a projectile size of 1 m with a 1-km target, we find QD = 10–10 J kg−1, in agreement with several other collision models that use fundamentally different techniques. Our model assumes that the components of each gravitational aggregate are identical and indestructible over the range of sampled impact speeds. In future work we hope to incorporate a simple fracture model to extend the range of applicable speeds and we plan to implement our results in a large-scale planetesimal evolution code. c © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA)