Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Numerical Simulations Of Complex Crater Formation In Layered And Mixed Targets, Ryan Hopkins

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Numerical simulations of hypervelocity impact events provide a unique method of analyzing the mechanics that govern impact crater formation. This thesis describes modifications that were made to the impact Simplified Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (iSALE) shock-physics code in order to more accurately simulate meteorite impacts into layered target sequences and details several applications that were investigated using this improved strength model.

Meteorite impacts occur frequently in layered targets but resolving thin layers in the target sequence is computationally expensive and therefore not often considered in numerical simulations. To address this limitation iSALE was modified to include an anisotropic yield criterion and …