Nuclear EMP simulation for large-scale urban environments. FDTD for electrically large problems.

Conference · Mon Aug 13 04:00:00 EDT 2012

OSTI ID:1048844

Smith, William S ^[1]; Bull, Jeffrey S ^[1]; Wilcox, Trevor ^[1]; Bos, Randall J ^[1]; Shao, Xuan-Min ^[1]; Goorley, John T ^[1]; Costigan, Keeley R ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory

In case of a terrorist nuclear attack in a metropolitan area, EMP measurement could provide: (1) a prompt confirmation of the nature of the explosion (chemical or nuclear) for emergency response; and (2) and characterization parameters of the device (reaction history, yield) for technical forensics. However, urban environment could affect the fidelity of the prompt EMP measurement (as well as all other types of prompt measurement): (1) Nuclear EMP wavefront would no longer be coherent, due to incoherent production, attenuation, and propagation of gamma and electrons; and (2) EMP propagation from source region outward would undergo complicated transmission, reflection, and diffraction processes. EMP simulation for electrically-large urban environment: (1) Coupled MCNP/FDTD (Finite-difference time domain Maxwell solver) approach; and (2) FDTD tends to be limited to problems that are not 'too' large compared to the wavelengths of interest because of numerical dispersion and anisotropy. We use a higher-order low-dispersion, isotropic FDTD algorithm for EMP propagation.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE/LANL
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1048844
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-12-24078
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
ALGORITHMS
ANISOTROPY
ATTENUATION
DIFFRACTION
ELECTRONS
EXPLOSIONS
INCOHERENT PRODUCTION
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
REFLECTION
SIMULATION
URBAN AREAS
WAVELENGTHS