Verification of the flow regimes based on high fidelity observations of bright meteors

Abstract

Infrasound monitoring has proved to be effective in detection of the meteor generated shock waves. When combined with optical observations of meteors, this technique is also reliable for detecting centimeter-sized meteoroids that usually ablate at high altitudes, thus offering relevant clues that open the exploration of the meteoroid flight regimes. Since a shock wave is formed as a result of a passage of the meteoroid through the atmosphere, the knowledge of the physical parameters of the surrounding gas around the meteoroid surface can be used to determine the meteor flow regime. This study analyses the flow regimes of a data set of twenty-four centimeter-sized meteoroids for which well constrained infrasound and photometric information is available. This is the first time that the flow regimes for meteoroids in this size range are validated from observations. From our approach, the Knudsen and Reynolds numbers are calculated, and two different flow regime evaluation approaches are compared in order to validate the theoretical formulation. The results demonstrate that a combination of fluid dynamic dimensionless parameters is needed to allow a better inclusion of the local physical processes of the phenomena.

arXiv comment41 pages, 3 Figures and 3 Tables (in press in ApJ)

References in corpus (3)

• Optical Observations of Meteors Generating Infrasound - I: Acoustic Signal Identification and Phenomenology
• Optical Observations of Meteors Generating Infrasound - II: Weak Shock Theory and Validation
• On Shock Waves and the Role of Hyperthermal Chemistry in the Early Diffusion of Overdense Meteor Trains

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