Roles of packing fraction, microscopic friction, and projectile spin in cratering by impact

From small seeds falling from trees to asteroids colliding with planets and moons, the impact of projectiles onto granular targets occurs in nature at different scales. In this paper, we investigate open questions in the mechanics of granular cratering, in particular, the forces acting on the projectile and the roles of granular packing, grain-grain friction, and projectile spin. For that, we carried out discrete element method computations of the impact of solid projectiles on a cohesionless granular medium, where we varied the projectile and grain properties (diameter, density, friction, and packing fraction) for different available energies (within relatively small values). We found that a denser region forms below the projectile, pushing it back and causing its rebound by the end of its motion, and that solid friction affects considerably the crater morphology. Besides, we show that the penetration length increases with the initial spin of the projectile, and that differences in initial packing fractions can engender the diversity of scaling laws found in the literature. Finally, we propose an ad hoc scaling that collapsed our data for the penetration length and can perhaps unify existing correlations. Our results provide new insights into the formation of craters in granular matter.