Third-Party Funded Project

MEMIN - Experimental Impact Research

The MEMIN network investigates impact processes through interdisciplinary lab experiments with light-gas guns and numerical modelling of impact craters.

    https://gepris.dfg.de

    Multidisciplinary Experimental and Modelling Impact Research Network (MEMIN)

    The impact of a cosmic body, such as an asteroid, on a planetary surface is a fundamental process throughout the Solar System. An understanding of this process can only be gained through interdisciplinary research involving natural craters, experimental laboratory studies and numerical simulations. Scientists at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin are involved in a multidisciplinary network for experimental and numerical impact research (Multidisciplinary Experimental and Modelling Impact Research Network, MEMIN), in which geoscientists, physicists and engineers work together to gain new insights into the formation of impact craters on Earth and other planets.

    Two-stage light-gas cannons play a central role in the MEMIN programme; these are made available for experimental studies through collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Transient Dynamics, Ernst Mach Institute. The light-gas cannons are capable of accelerating iron, aluminium and meteoritic projectiles with diameters ranging from 2 to 12 millimetres to velocities of up to 7.8 kilometres per second. This results in previously unattainable crater sizes in the decimetre range in solid rocks, enabling detailed spatial analyses. By using different target rocks with varying strengths, porosities and water saturation, and by varying the impact velocities and projectile material, the aim is to investigate the influence on crater mechanics, shock wave metamorphism and projectile distribution during the impact process.

    The work programme comprises a comprehensive mineralogical, petrophysical and mechanical characterisation of the target rocks before and after the impact experiments. Novel geophysical methods for mesoscale tomography and microstructural analyses at the nanometre scale are employed for this purpose. Crack propagation, stresses, crater growth and ejecta dynamics are measured in situ in real time using newly developed methods. In addition, the entire crater formation process is modelled numerically.

    MEMIN is designed to validate and refine numerical crater models on the basis of a robust dataset, enabling experimental observations to be extrapolated to real-world crater sizes.

     

    Publications

    Kenkmann, T., Deutsch, A., Thoma, K., Ebert, M., Poelchau, M. H., Buhl, E., Carl, E.-R., Danilewsky, A. N., Dresen, G., Dufresne, A., Durr, N., Ehm, L., Grosse, C., Gulde, M., Güldemeister, N., Hamann, C., Hecht, L., Hiermaier, S., Hoerth, T., Kowitz, A., Langenhorst, F., Lexow, B., Liermann, H.-P., Luther, R., Mansfeld, U., Moser, D., Raith, M., Reimold, W. U., Sauer, M., Schäfer, F., Schmitt, R. T., Sommer, F., Wilk, J., Winkler, R., Wünnemann, K. (2018): Experimental impact cratering: A summary of the major results of the MEMIN research unit. - Meteoritics and Planetary Science, 53, 8, pp. 1543—1568.
    DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/maps.13048