Extended two-body problem for rotating rigid bodies
A new technique that utilizes surface integrals to find the force, torque and potential energy between two non-spherical, rigid bodies is presented. The method is relatively fast, and allows us to solve the full rigid two-body problem for pairs of spheroids and ellipsoids with 12 degrees of freedom. We demonstrate the method with two dimensionless test scenarios, one where tumbling motion develops, and one where the motion of the bodies resemble spinning tops. We also test the method on the asteroid binary (66391) 1999 KW4, where both components are modelled either as spheroids or ellipsoids. The two different shape models have negligible effects on the eccentricity and semi-major axis, but…
Dynamics of asteroid systems post-rotational fission
Asteroid binaries found amongst the Near-Earth objects are believed to have formed from rotational fission. In this paper, we aim to study the dynamical evolution of asteroid systems the moment after fission. The initial condition is modelled as a contact binary, similar to that of Boldrin et al. (2016). Both bodies are modelled as ellipsoids, and the secondary is given an initial rotation angle about its body-fixed $y$-axis. Moreover, we consider six different cases, three where the density of the secondary varies, and three where we vary its shape. The simulations consider 45 different initial tilt angles of the secondary, each with 37 different mass ratios. We start the dynamical simulat…