Collisional lifetimes of meteoroids

International audienceCollisions of meteoroids with interplanetary dust grain fragments particles, dispersing larger particles amongst lower mass intervals. Here we use the method of Grün et al. (1985) and the IMEM interplanetary dust model to calculate the collisional lifetimes for different orbits, and for particles in different meteor showers. The timescales are usually long - of order 10^4 years for 1mm grains on Jupiter-family and Hally-type comet orbits. However, near-sun orbits particles suffer more frequent collisions and therefore have much shorter lifetimes. We discuss factors that affect the accuracy of these calculations