Particle-in-cell Simulation Concerning Heat-flux Mitigation Using Electromagnetic Fields

The Particle-in-Cell (PIC) method was used to study heat flux mitigation experiments with argon. In the experiment it was shown that a magnetic field allows to reduce the heat flux towards a target. PIC is well-suited for plasma simulation, giving the chance to get a better basic understanding of the underlying physics. The simulation demonstrates the importance of a self-consistent neutral-plasma description to understand the effect of heat flux reduction

Solutioin of Poisson's Equation in Electrostatic Particle-on-cell Simulation

In electrostatic Particle-in-Cell simulations of the HEMP-DM3a ion thruster the role of different solution strategies for Poisson?s equation was investigated. The direct solution method of LU decomposition is compared to a stationary iterative method, the successive over-relaxation solver. Results and runtime of solvers were compared, and an outlook on further improvements and developments is presented

Influence of Electron Sources on the Near-field Plume in a Multistage Plasma Thruster

n order to obtain a better understanding of the near-field plume of a multistage plasma thruster, the influence of an external electron source is investigated by Particle-In-Cell simulations. The variation of the source position showed a strong influence of the magnetic field configuration on the electron distribution and therefore on the plume plasma. In the second part of this work, higher energetic electrons were injected in order to model collision-induced diffusion in the plume. This broadens the electron distribution, which leads to a more pronounced divergence angle in the angular ion distribution

Particle-in-cell simulation of an optimized high-efficiency multistage plasma thruster

Electric propulsion attracts increasing attention in contemporary space missions as an interesting alternative to chemical propulsion because of the high efficiency it offers. The High-Efficiency Multistage Plasma thruster, a class of cusped field thruster, is able to operate at different anode voltages and operation points and thereby generate different levels of thrust in a stable and efficient way. Since experiments of such thrusters are inherently expensive, multi-objective design optimization (MDO) is of great interest. Several optimized thruster designs have resulted from a MDO model based on a zero-dimensional (0D) power balance model. However, the MDO solutions do not warrant self-consistency due to their dependency on estimation from empirical modelling based on former experimental studies. In this study, one of the optimized thruster designs is investigated by means of particle-in-cell (PIC) analysis to examine the predicted performance characteristics with self-consistent simulations. The 0D power balance model is used to develop additional diagnostics for the PIC simulations to improve the physics analysis. Using input parameters for the 0D power balance model from the PIC simulations allows further improvement for the design optimization