Numerical Investigation of the Consequences of Land Impacts, Water Impacts, or Air Bursts of Asteroids

Abstract:

The annual probability of an asteroid impact is low, but over time, such catastrophic events are inevitable. Interest in assessing the impact consequences has led us to develop a physics-based framework to seamlessly simulate the event from entry to impact, including air and water shock propagation and wave generation. The non-linear effects are simulated using the hydrodynamics code GEODYN. As effects propagate outward, they become a wave source for the linear-elastic-wave propagation code, WPP/WWP. The GEODYN-WPP/WWP coupling is based on the structured adaptive-mesh-refinement infrastructure, SAMRAI, and has been used in FEMA table-top exercises conducted in 2013 and 2014, and more recently, the 2015 Planetary Defense Conference exercise. Results from these simulations provide an estimate of onshore effects and can inform more sophisticated inundation models. The capabilities of this methodology are illustrated by providing results for different impact locations, and an exploration of asteroid size on the waves arriving at the shoreline of area cities. We constructed the maximum and minimum envelops of water-wave heights given the size of the asteroid and the location of the impact along the risk corridor. Such profiles can inform emergency response and disaster-mitigation efforts, and may be used for design of maritime protection or assessment of risk to shoreline structures of interest. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. LLNL-ABS-675390-DRAFT.