{"id":41691,"date":"2026-05-21T18:49:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T16:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=41691"},"modified":"2026-05-21T18:49:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T16:49:24","slug":"benchmarking-cylindrical-blast-wave-theory-against-the-osiris-rex-sample-return-capsule-reentry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=41691","title":{"rendered":"Benchmarking Cylindrical Blast Wave Theory Against the OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Capsule Reentry<span class=\"badge-status\" style=\"background:#787878\">OPEN ACCESS<\/span>&nbsp;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Elizabeth A. Silber<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Accepted for publication on 12 May 2026 in <em>Pure and Applied Geophysics<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/2605.20455\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>PDF (OPEN ACCESS)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify-text\">&#8220;Weak shock theory based on cylindrical blast waves has been used to interpret meteor infrasound, but it has not been systematically benchmarked against a non-ablating hypersonic source with independently known parameters. The objective of this study is not to propose a new theoretical framework, but to evaluate the operational validity of the existing suite of blast radius formulations against a high-fidelity ground truth dataset. The OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Capsule reentry on 24 September 2023 provides such a benchmark because the capsule geometry, trajectory, and infrasound emission points are constrained from mission data and ray tracing, reducing source-side uncertainty associated with ablation. Using observations from 39 infrasound stations, this benchmarking study evaluates six published blast radius (R_0) formulations and three weak-shock transition coefficients (C) within a stratified atmospheric propagation model to predict signal period and peak overpressure. The benchmarking identifies the Sakurai formulation as the best-performing formulation for non-ablating bodies, with the Jones\/Plooster formulation performing comparably when a physically appropriate C is adopted. Sakurai and Jones\/Plooster yield linear-period median absolute percentage residuals of 9% and 11%, respectively. The period predictions show only weak sensitivity to C at these propagation distances. The Mach-diameter approximation commonly used in meteor studies overestimates R_0 by more than a factor of 3 in the absence of ablation. These results establish a performance baseline for applying cylindrical blast wave theory to non-ablating hypersonic bodies and demonstrate that the signal period is a robust observable for constraining R_0. &#8220;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elizabeth A. Silber Accepted for publication on 12 May 2026 in Pure and Applied Geophysics PDF (OPEN ACCESS) &#8220;Weak shock theory based on cylindrical blast waves has been used to interpret meteor infrasound, but it&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,552,97,181],"tags":[3716,226,3187,3715,1886,4899,270],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41692,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41691\/revisions\/41692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}