Laboratory experiments on the impact disruption of iron meteorites at temperature of near-Earth space

The fragment mass distribution of the iron material was different from that of rocks. In the iron fragmentation, a higher percentage of the mass was concentrated in larger fragments, probably due to the ductile nature of the material at room temperature. The largest fragment mass fraction f was dependent not only on the energy density but also on the size d of the specimen. We assumed a power-law dependence of the largest fragment mass fraction to initial peak pressure P0 normalized by a dynamic strength, Y, which was defined to be dependent on the size of the iron material. A least squares fit to the data of iron meteorite specimens resulted in the following relationship: f∝P0Y-2.1±0.2∝d-0.87±0.15, indicating a large size dependence of f. Additionally, the deformation of the iron materials in high-velocity shots was found to be most significant when the initial pressure greatly exceeded the dynamic strength of the material.