THE INTERPRETATION OF LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF AN IMPROVED SEMIEMPIRICAL MODEL

The semi-empirical model of catastrophic breakup events developed by Paolicchi et al. (Icarus 77, 187-212, 1989) has recently been improved by means of new algorithms allowing the generation of sets of non-overlapping fragments, and to take into account gravitational effects. In this paper we give the results of simulations aimed specifically at reproducing laboratory experiments. A comparison with both the experimental evidence and the results of the previous version of the model is presented, and particular attention is devoted to the problem of the shape distribution of the fragments. The results seem encouraging, and allow us to undertake more detailed investigations in order to analyse in detail the capability of the model for reproducing both the laboratory results and the properties exhibited by the asteroidal population, in particular, asteroid families.