PIC simulation of a ceramic-lined Hall-effect thruster
Name
54448183-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
4.84 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7e9f91ce91aa5a2d01dd9e36fc6c0524
Author(s)
Blateau, Vincent, 1979-
Advisor(s)
Manuel Martínez-Sánchez.
Alternative Title
Particle-In-Cell simulation of a ceramic-lined Hall-effect thruster
Date Issued
2002
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
A full Particle-In-Cell code, written by James Szabo [23], was used to model a 50W TAL and 3kW SPT thruster. This code treats single and double ions, neutrals and electrons as particles, moved forward by a leapfrog algorithm at each timestep, matching the lowest of the plasma and the cyclotron times. At the end of each timestep, a successive-over-relaxation algorithm solves the Gauss' formulation of the Poisson equation. Collisions include electron-neutral single and double ionization, and elastic scattering, electron-ion double ionization, ion-neutral elastic scattering and chargeexchange. A few tricks are used to decrease the computation time: superparticles, an artificial permittivity factor and lighter-than-physical ions. We modified this code to track the different components governing the thruster efficiency, and to map average internal data in the thruster. We used these tools to track changes with higher-than- nominal voltage (600, 900 and 1200V) for the 50W, 300V mini-TAL, optimizing efficiency vs. magnetic fields at each voltage. We further modified the code to model a 3kW SPT thruster. These modifications include ceramic wall secondary electron emission, a new boundary condition model for the Poisson solver at ceramic walls, an improved sheath model, and a new anomalous diffusion algorithm. Converged results with low anomalous diffusion diffusion were obtained, along with intermediary results with higher diffusion.
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-101).
Subjects
Aeronautics and Astronautics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Terms of Use
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