An integrated DEM code for tracing the entire regolith mass movement on asteroids

Song, Zhijun, Yu, Yang, Soldini, Stefania ORCID: 0000-0003-3121-3845, Cheng, Bin and Michel, Patrick (2024) An integrated DEM code for tracing the entire regolith mass movement on asteroids MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, 532 (2). pp. 1307-1329. ISSN 0035-8711, 1365-2966

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Abstract

This paper presents a general strategy for tracking the scale-span movement process of asteroid regolith materials. It achieves the tracking of the mass movement on the asteroid at a realistic scale, under conditions of high-resolution asteroid surface topography (submeter level) and actual regolith particle sizes. To overcome the memory exponential expansion caused by the enlarged computational domain, we improved the conventional cell-linked list method so that it can be applied to arbitrarily large computational domains around asteroids. An efficient contact detection algorithm for particles and polyhedral shape models of asteroids is presented, which avoids traversing all surface triangles and thus allows us to model high-resolution surface topography. A parallel algorithm based on Compute Unified Device Architecture for the gravitational field of the asteroid is presented. Leveraging heterogeneous computing features, further architectural optimization overlaps computations of the long-range and short-range interactions, resulting in an approaching doubling of computational efficiency compared to the code lacking architectural optimizations. Using the above strategy, a specific high-fidelity discrete element method code that integrates key mechanical models, including the irregular gravitational field, the interparticle and particle-surface interactions, and the coupled dynamics between the particles and the asteroid, is developed to track the asteroid regolith mass movement. As tests, we simulated the landslide of a sand pile on the asteroid’s surface during spin-up. The simulation results demonstrate that the code can track the mass movement of the regolith particles on the surface of the asteroid from local landslides to mass leakage with good accuracy.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	methods: numerical, minor planets, asteroids: general
Divisions:	Faculty of Science & Engineering Faculty of Science & Engineering > School of Engineering
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	27 Nov 2024 16:01
Last Modified:	16 Jun 2026 16:51
DOI:	10.1093/mnras/stae1537
Open Access URL:	https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/532/2/1307/...
Related Websites:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3188916
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