Dynamical properties measurements for asteroid, comet and meteorite material applicable to impact modeling and mitigation calculations

We describe methods for measuring dynamical properties for two material categories of interest in understanding large-scale extraterrestrial impacts: iron-nickel and underdense materials (e.g. snow). Particular material properties measured by the present methods include Hugoniot, release paths and constitutive properties (stress vs. strain). The iron-nickel materials lend themselves well to conventional shock and quasi-static experiments. As examples, a suite of experiments is described including six impact tests (wave profile compression/release) over the stress range 2 - 20 GPa, metallography, quasi-static and split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) mechanical testing, and ultrasonic mapping and sound velocity measurements. Temperature sensitivity of the dynamic behavior was measured at high and low strain rates. Among the iron-nickel materials tested, an octahedrite was found to have behavior close to that of Armco iron under shock and quasi-static conditions, while an ataxite exhibited a significantly larger quasistatic yield strength than did the octahedrite or a hexahedrite. The underdense materials pose three primary experimental difficulties. First, the samples are perishable; they can melt or sublimate during storage, preparation and testing. Second, they are brittle and crushable; they cannot withstand such treatment as traditional machining or launch in a gun system. Third, with increasing porosity the calculated Hugoniot density becomes rapidly more sensitive to errors in wave time-of-arrival measurements. Carefully chosen simulants eliminate preservation (friability) difficulties, but the other difficulties remain. A family of 36 impact tests was conducted on snow and snow simulants at Sandia, yielding reliable Hugoniot and reshock states, but limited release property information. Other methods for characterizing these materials are discussed.