Deep Impact

Numerical airburst solver and an airblast hazard mapper.

Motivation

Asteroids entering Earth’s atmosphere are subject to extreme drag forces that decelerate, heat and disrupt the space rocks. The fate of an asteroid is a complex function of its initial mass, speed, trajectory angle and internal strength.

Asteroids 10-100 m in diameter can penetrate deep into Earth’s atmosphere and disrupt catastrophically, generating an atmospheric disturbance. Such an event occurred over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia, in 2013, releasing energy equivalent to about 520 kilotons of TNT (1 kt TNT is equivalent to $4.184 \times 10^{12}$ J), and injuring thousands of people (Popova et al., 2013; Brown et al., 2013).

Overview

This project was developed as part of the Applying Computational Science group project (with a team of 8) at Imperial College London.

It is a Python-based solution with two core features:

  • Airburst Solver - a fast numerical simulator to predict the fate of asteroids entering Earth’s atmosphere.
  • Airblast Damage Mapper - a hazard mapper (that uses the solver) for an impact over the UK.

Technical Details

  1. The operational workflow of the numerical airbust solver:
Airburst Solver Workflow
  1. The operational workflow of the airblast damage mapper:
Airblast Mapper Workflow

Airbust Solver Demo

Airblast Damage Mapper Demo