Natural Hazard Associated to Shock Waves of Meter-Sized Meteoroids

Tapia, Mar; Trigo-Rodríguez, J. M.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-46179-3_10

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…That is not to say that there is a lack of understanding of rarefied gas dynamics and hypersonic flow (Brun, 2009;Anderson, 2006;Cercignani, 2000); rather, that area of research has been, and still is, confined and maintained within the domain of specialized applications of re-entry studies (Sarma, 2000), there being little or no cross disciplinary work with investigators in the meteor field. Thus, the main motive behind this review is to consolidate and bring the state of the field up to date and to facilitate further understanding of and inquiry into those unresolved questions in meteor science, in particular about meteor generated shock waves and related phenomena which in extreme and rare cases can present considerable danger to civilian lives and infrastructure (e.g., Brown et al, 2013;Popova et al, 2013;Pelton et al, 2015;Kulagin et al, 2016;Tapia et al, 2017). We present a long needed condensed survey of the available (and sparse) literature covering fundamental and up-to-date aspects of meteor related shock wave phenomena and attempt to balance it with a review of the related interdisciplinary work from hypersonic gas dynamics (and other related disciplines).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physics of meteor generated shock waves in the Earth’s atmosphere – A review

Silber

Boslough

Hocking

et al. 2018

Advances in Space Research

106

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Shock waves and the associated phenomena generated by strongly ablating meteoroids with sizes greater than a few millimeters in the lower transitional flow regime of the Earth's atmosphere are the least explored aspect of meteor science. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of literature covering meteor generated shock wave phenomena, from the aspect of both meteor science and hypersonic gas dynamics. The primary emphasis of this review is placed on the mechanisms and dynamics of the meteor shock waves. We discuss key aspects of both shock generation and propagation, including the great importance of the hydrodynamic shielding that develops around the meteoroid. In addition to this in-depth review, the discussion is extended to an overview of meteoroid fragmentation, followed by airburst type events associated with large, deep penetrating meteoroids. This class of objects has a significant potential to cause extensive material damage and even human casualties on the ground, and as such is of great interest to the planetary defense community. To date, no comprehensive model exists that accurately describes the flow field and shock wave formation of a strongly ablating meteoroid in the non-continuum flow regime. Thus, we briefly present the current state of numerical models that describe the comparatively slower flow of air over non-ablating bodies in the rarefied regime. In respect to the elusive nature of meteor generated shock wave detection, we also discuss relevant aspects and applications of meteor radar and infrasound studies as tools that can be utilized to study meteor shock waves and related phenomena. In particular, infrasound data can provide energy release estimates of meteoroids entering the Earth's atmosphere. We conclude with a summary of unresolved questions in the domain of meteor generated shock waves; topics which should be a focus of future investigations in the field.

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