Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics in pkdgrav3 for Shock Physics Simulations. II. Shear Strength

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Main Authors: Meier, Thomas, Reinhardt, Christian, Jutzi, Martin, Potter, Douglas, Stadel, Joachim
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Meier, Thomas
Reinhardt, Christian
Jutzi, Martin
Potter, Douglas
Stadel, Joachim
author_facet Meier, Thomas
Reinhardt, Christian
Jutzi, Martin
Potter, Douglas
Stadel, Joachim
contents Material strength effects have been recently shown to be significant in giant impacts even at scales of planetary collisions. Despite this, their effects are often neglected in numerical giant impact simulations. We present an implementation of a basic strength model (pressure dependent shear strength) in the massively parallel smoothed particle hydrodynamics code pkdgrav3. The model includes elastic deviatoric stresses, plasticity with pressure-dependent yield strength, and thermal softening, and is fully integrated into the GPU-accelerated framework introduced in Paper I, preserving its scalability and performance characteristics. We validate the implementation against laboratory experiments of granular cliff collapse and our simulation results are in excellent agreement. We then determine the catastrophic disruption threshold, $Q_{RD}^*$, over a wide mass range of the colliding bodies using simulations performed both with and without material strength. Consistent with prior work, we find that strength substantially increases $Q_{RD}^*$ in the low-mass regime, while convergence toward the fluid limit occurs only near $R_{C1} \sim 10^7$ m ($\sim 0.7,M_\oplus$), well above the often assumed $\sim 100$ km size limit. Entropy production and remnant morphology likewise remain sensitive to rheology at intermediate masses. Performance measurements show that including strength introduces only modest computational overhead while maintaining favorable scaling, thereby enabling realistic solid mechanics in large-scale impact simulations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_19764
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics in pkdgrav3 for Shock Physics Simulations. II. Shear Strength
Meier, Thomas
Reinhardt, Christian
Jutzi, Martin
Potter, Douglas
Stadel, Joachim
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Material strength effects have been recently shown to be significant in giant impacts even at scales of planetary collisions. Despite this, their effects are often neglected in numerical giant impact simulations. We present an implementation of a basic strength model (pressure dependent shear strength) in the massively parallel smoothed particle hydrodynamics code pkdgrav3. The model includes elastic deviatoric stresses, plasticity with pressure-dependent yield strength, and thermal softening, and is fully integrated into the GPU-accelerated framework introduced in Paper I, preserving its scalability and performance characteristics. We validate the implementation against laboratory experiments of granular cliff collapse and our simulation results are in excellent agreement. We then determine the catastrophic disruption threshold, $Q_{RD}^*$, over a wide mass range of the colliding bodies using simulations performed both with and without material strength. Consistent with prior work, we find that strength substantially increases $Q_{RD}^*$ in the low-mass regime, while convergence toward the fluid limit occurs only near $R_{C1} \sim 10^7$ m ($\sim 0.7,M_\oplus$), well above the often assumed $\sim 100$ km size limit. Entropy production and remnant morphology likewise remain sensitive to rheology at intermediate masses. Performance measurements show that including strength introduces only modest computational overhead while maintaining favorable scaling, thereby enabling realistic solid mechanics in large-scale impact simulations.
title Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics in pkdgrav3 for Shock Physics Simulations. II. Shear Strength
topic Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.19764