Generation of electromagnetic effect and flash in hypervelocity impact of aluminum projectile on aluminum target

Abstract

A 3D Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code was developed to investigate the generation of electromagnetic effect and flash during hypervelocity impact of an aluminum projectile on an aluminum target. The Arrhenius equation and the Biot-Savart law were incorporated into the SPH code for calculating the plasma charge and the magnetic field intensity from the plasma. Planck's law for the blackbody spectral radiance was introduced into the SPH code to determine the flash radiation intensities of different characteristic wavelengths. By using the SPH code, the effect of impact velocities and angles on the magnetic field intensity and flash intensity was explored. The numerical results show that the magnetic field intensity and flash intensity increase significantly with the impact velocity. By decreasing the incident angle from 90° to 45°, the magnetic field intensity and flash intensity decrease. Finally, based on the numerical simulations, two semiempirical formulae were proposed to accurately describe the variation of magnetic field intensity and the evolution of the flash radiation intensity with the impact velocity and the impact angle.

Detecting the meteoroid by measuring the electromagnetic waves excited by the collision between the hypervelocity meteoroid and spacecraft

“…A meteoroid is a small, solid, extraterrestrial object in the size range of 100 μm to 10 m. It usually has an impact speed up to 72 km s −1 . Particles smaller than this are called dust, while those larger than this are called asteroids [5,6]. The vast majority of detected meteoroids mainly originate from comet and asteroid debris streams within our solar system, while a small portion possibly come from the outside of our solar system.…”