Computational Forensics for the Syrian Sarin Attack in April 2017：What Has Happened ?

报 告 人：Goong Chen (Texas A&M University-德州农工大学)
报告题目： Computational Forensics for the Syrian Sarin Attack in April 2017：What Has Happened ?
报告时间：2017年10月25日（周三）15：00
报告地点：理科楼理A302
报告人简介：
   Goong Chen，Texas A&M University教授、博士生导师。1977年博士毕业于美国University of Wisconsin at Madison，自1987年至今，一直在美国Texas A&M University数学系和航空工程系任教，现为该校终身教授。 Goong Chen教授多年来致力于偏微分方程的控制理论与数值方法、工程力学，混沌动力学、量子计算，化学物理学，量子力学等方面研究，取得了很多高水平的研究成果，主编7本专著，合编4本教材，在SIAM Review、SIAM J Control Opt等刊物上发表了150多篇高水平的学术论文。目前，是SCI期刊Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications的主编和美国Chapman & Hall/CRC出版社的应用数学和非线性科学类丛书的主编，同时，还担任SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, the International Journal on Quantum Information, Physica Scripta, and the Electronic Journal of Differential Equations等期刊的副主编。现为美国数学会 (AMS)和美国工业应用数学会 (SIAM)的会员。
报告摘要：
  In the morning between 6 ~ 7am of April 4, 2017 , a sarin chemical attack took place in Khan Shaykhun in the Idlib Governorate of Syria. It killed 86 people and injured more than 500. On the morning of 7 April 2017, 72 hours after the attack, the Trump Administration of the United States launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the USS Porter on Shayrat Airbase, as a punishments and a strong admonition.
       The only undisputable fact is that a chemical attack did take place. But the Syrian Government vehemently denied that it  carried out the attack. Videos have been posted on the Internet alleging that a crater on the street of Khan Shaykhun was the scene where a chemical was dropped, causing the casualties. However, there are many inconsistencies about the crater and the debris that suggest the scene was staged and evidences were tampered. Dr. Theodore Postol, a top world weapon expert, has hypothesized some setup of munitions that may have caused the crater and the debris as shown in the videos.
      As the crater and the debris are the only available evidences, in this talk, we use the computer modeling tool of LS-DYNA to study and analyze them for forensics. The explosion model in LS-DYNA is the Jones-Wilkins-Lee (JWL-) Equation of State.This equation is to be coupled with the conservation of mass, momentum, energy and constitutive equations for the numerical computation and simulation of the explosion and fracture effects. We will indicate how
to proceed with the computation with LS-DYNA and the input, and also how to do data validation. Supercomputer results the outputs are then visualized through several videos. Based on the videos, discussions and assessments about the chemical attack are then made. This research work is still ongoing and unfinished. Some future outlook will be provided.