Wind Erosion On Mars And Other Small Terrestrial Planets

We carried out wind tunnel experiments on parabolic flights with 100 μm Mojave Mars simulant sand. The experiments result in shear stress thresholds and erosion rates for varying g-levels at 600 Pa pressure.

Our data confirm former results on JSC Mars 1A simulant where the threshold shear stress is lower under Martian gravity than extrapolated from earlier ground-based studies which fits observations of Martian sand activity. The data are consistent with a model by Shao and Lu (2000) and can also be applied to other small terrestrial (exo)-planets with low pressure atmospheres.

Maximilian Kruss, Grzegorz Musiolik, Tunahan Demirci, Gerhard Wurm, Jens Teiser
(Submitted on 5 Nov 2019)

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Journal reference: Icarus 337 (2020), 113438
DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2019.113438
Cite as: arXiv:1911.01692 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1911.01692v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Maximilian Kruss
[v1] Tue, 5 Nov 2019 10:02:03 UTC (750 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.01692
Astrobiology, Astrogeology