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Damage from Hydrocode Simulations of Asteroid Airburst or Impacts

AMS Seminar Series

Speaker: Darrel Robertson, NASA Ames Research Center/Science and Technology Corporation

Presentation

Seminar Slide Deck (PDF-47MB)

Abstract

If an asteroid was the impact the Earth would it be more dangerous if it hit the land causing an earthquake, in a shallow sea or in a deep ocean where it can create a tsunami wave? This seminar covers work presented in May at the International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference in Tokyo, Japan. A set of hydrocode simulations were conducted following the hypothetical scenario from the conference of a 100–250 meter diameter asteroid on a potential impact course with Earth. If there was insufficient time for a deflection effort to redirect an impactor so that it will miss Earth completely, but sufficient time does exist to allow it to be redirected somewhat, should it be redirected to a land or an ocean impact? While distance from densely populated areas should obviously be maximized, the differing ability of blast, ground shock waves, and tsunami waves to cause damage at distance does not make the choice between land and ocean impacts an immediately obvious one. The simulations conducted on the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA Ames will address these questions and be used to validate, calibrate, and improve semi-empirical and analytic models used in calculating the overall hazard from all of the near-Earth asteroids.

Biography

Darrel Robertson is an aerospace engineer with Science and Technology Corporation at NASA Ames Research Center in California. He has 20 years of experience modeling complex fluid dynamic flows including combustion, and fluid-structure interaction such as blast loading and fragmentation. As part of the Asteroid Threat Assessment Project, he has modelled the break-up and airburst of small asteroids such as the Chelyabinsk event, and tsunami generation from ocean impact. He earned his B.Sc. in Physics with Space Science from Leicester University in the UK, and his S.M. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.