assuming that the meteoroid is approximately spherical
For the purposes of the Earth Impact Effects Program, we
assume that the trajectory of the impactor is a straight line
from the top of the atmosphere to the surface, sloping at a
constant angle to the horizon given by the user. Acceleration
of the impactor by the Earthâ(TM)s gravity is ignored, as is
deviation of the trajectory toward the vertical in the case that
terminal velocity is reached, as it may be for small impactors.
The curvature of the Earth is also ignored. The atmosphere is
assumed to be purely exponential:
We define the airburst altitude zb to be the height above the surface at which the impactor diameter L(z)
= 7L0. All the impact energy is assumed to be deposited at this altitude;
if the unbulked breccia lens volume Vbr (i.e., the observed
volume of the breccia lens multiplied by a 90â"95% bulking
correction factor; Grieve and Garvin 1984) is assumed to be
related to the final crater diameter by: Vbr â 0.032Dfr^3
Assuming that the top
surface of the breccia lens is parabolic and that the
brecciation process increases the bulk volume of this
material by 10%
we assume, based on numerical modeling work
(Pierazzo and Melosh 2000; Ivanov and Artemieva 2002), that
the volume of impact melt is roughly proportional to the
volume of the transient crater
Here we assume that the
crater floor diameter is similar to the transient crater diameter
Numerical simulations of vapor
plume expansion (Melosh et al. 1993; Nemtchinov et al. 1998)
predict that the fireball radius at the time of maximum radiation
is 10â"15 times the impactor diameter. We use a value of 13 and
assume âoeyield scalingâ applies to derive a relationship between
impact energy E in joules and the fireball radius in meters
The time at which thermal radiation is at a maximum Tt is
estimated by assuming that the initial expansion of the fireball
occurs at approximately the same velocity as the impact:
for a first-order estimate we
assume Î = 3 Ã-- 10â'3 and ignore the poorly-constrained
velocity dependence.
âoeas a rough approximation, the amount of thermal energy
received at a given distance from a nuclear explosion may be
assumed to be independent of the visibility.â
To calculate the seismic magnitude of an impact event,
we assume that the âoeseismic efficiencyâ (the fraction of the
kinetic energy of the impact that ends up as seismic wave
energy) is one part in ten thousand
we assume that the main seismic wave energy is that
associated with the surface waves.
For simplicity, we ignore the uplifted fraction of the
crater rim material. We estimate the thickness of ejecta at a
given distance from an impact by assuming that the material
lying above the pre-impact ground surface is entirely ejecta,
that it has a maximum thickness te = htr at the transient crater
rim, and that it falls off as one over the distance from the
crater rim cubed
we
assume that the transient crater is a paraboloid with a depth to
diameter ratio of 1:2
assumes that all ejecta is thrown out of the crater from
the same point and at the same angle (45Â) to the horizontal.
we assume that the impact-generated shock wave in
the air is directly analogous to that generated by an explosive
charge detonated at the ground surface
the Mach region is
assumed to begin at the impact point
For convenience, however, we assume that the shock
wave travels at the ambient sound speed in air
The air blast model we use extrapolates from data
recorded after a very small explosion (in impact cratering
terms) in which the atmosphere may be treated as being of
uniform density. Furthermore, at this scale of explosion, the
peak overpressure decays to zero at distances so small (