2015/08/31 by Tomoya Yamada, Tomoya M. Yamada, Kousuke Ando +2 · 24 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Asteroid #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrobiology #Convection #Geology #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Geophysics #Mechanics #Physics #Planetary Science and Exploration #Regolith #astro-ph.EP #physics.geo-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2016.02.032
published in Icarus 272, 165-177 (Elsevier BV) · 14pages, 8figures
arxiv created 2016/02/26 · openalex publication_date 2016/03/02 · arxiv updated 2016/04/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A model for the asteroid resurfacing by regolith convection is built to estimate its timescale. In the model, regolith convection is driven by the impact-induced global seismic shaking. The model consists of three steps: (i) intermittent impact of meteoroids, (ii) impact-induced global vibration (seismic shaking), and (iii) vibration-induced regolith convection. In order to assess the feasibility of the resurfacing process driven by regolith convection, we estimate the resurfacing timescale as a function of the size of a target asteroid. In the estimate, a set of parameter values is assumed on the basis of previous works. However, some of them (e.g., seismic quality factor Q, seismic efficiency η, and seismic frequency f) are very uncertain. Although these parameter values might depend on asteroid size, we employ the standard values to estimate the representative behavior. To clarify the parameter dependences, we develop an approximated scaling form for the resurfacing timescale. According to the estimated result, we find that the regolith-convection-based resurfacing timescale is shorter than the mean collisional lifetime in most of the parameter uncertainty ranges. These parameter ranges are within those reported by previous works for small asteroids. This means that the regolith convection can be a possible mechanism for the asteroid resurfacing process.