A fragment-cloud model for asteroid breakup and atmospheric energy deposition

Abstract As asteroids break up during atmospheric entry, they deposit energy that can be seen in flares of light and, if substantial enough, can produce damaging blast waves. Analytic models of asteroid breakup and energy deposition processes are needed in order to assess potential airburst hazards, and to enable inferences about asteroid properties or breakup physics to be made from comparisons with observed meteors. This paper presents a fragment-cloud model (FCM) that is able to represent a broad range of breakup behaviors and the resulting variations in energy deposition in ways that make it a useful tool for both applications. Sensitivity studies are performed to investigate how variations the model's fragmentation parameters affect the energy deposition results for asteroids 20–500 m in diameter. The model is also used to match observational data from the Chelyabinsk meteor and infer potential asteroid properties and representative modeling parameter ranges. Results illustrate how the model's fragmentation parameters can introduce different energy deposition features, and how much they affect the overall energy deposition rates, magnitudes, and altitudes that would drive ground damage for risk assessment applications.