Computational Validation of Nuclear Explosion Energy Coupling Models for Asteroid Fragmentation

The objective of this research is the formulation, implementation, and validation of a numerical method to accurately model and simulate explosion blast and shock waves for the disruption of asteroids. While the cases presented in this paper are not explosions caused by actual nuclear devices, they will aid in validation of the numerical model for future nuclear-explosion simulations. Current work employs the two-dimensional highorder correction procedure via reconstruction (CPR) method with explicit time-stepping to solve the Euler equations. Accurate capturing of shocks is obtained through a shock detector coupled with a slope limiter. The CPR method is compared with simulations from AUTODYN, a commercial hydrodynamics code by ANSYS, where excellent matchings are obtained. Additionally, all numerical simulations are completed using NVIDIA CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), where superior computational speeds are demonstrated. Finally, surface and subsurface explosions are simulated, and the energy transfered to a target body is monitored. Coupling factors are computed and the desired results are obtained. This new computational tool is to be incorporated into a mission design software tool for the analysis and design of an asteroid disruption mission.