SKA-MID surveys will be the first in the radio domain to achieve clearly
sub-arcsecond resolution at high sensitivity over large areas, opening new
science applications for galaxy evolution. To investigate the potential of
these surveys, we create simulated SKA-MID images of a ∼0.04 deg2
region of GOODS-North, constructed using multi-band HST imaging of 1723 real
galaxies containing significant substructure at 0<z<2.5. We create images at
the proposed depths of the band 2 wide, deep and ultradeep reference surveys
(RMS = 1.0 μJy, 0.2 μJy and 0.05 μJy over 1000 deg2, 10-30
deg2 and 1 deg2 respectively), using the telescope response of
SKA-MID at 0.6" resolution. We quantify the star-formation rate - stellar mass
space the surveys will probe, and asses to which stellar masses they will be
complete. We measure galaxy flux density, half-light radius (R50​),
concentration, Gini (distribution of flux), second-order moment of the
brightest pixels (M20​) and asymmetry before and after simulation with the
SKA response, to perform input-output tests as a function of depth, separating
the effects of convolution and noise. We find that the recovery of Gini and
asymmetry is more dependent on survey depth than for R50​, concentration
and M20​. We also assess the relative ranking of parameters before and
after observation with SKA-MID. R50​ best retains its ranking, whilst
asymmetries are poorly recovered. We confirm that the wide tier will be suited
to the study of highly star-forming galaxies across different environments,
whilst the ultradeep tier will enable detailed morphological analysis to lower
SFRs.Comment: 25 pages, 14 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRA