Plasma, Simulation, Ion thrusters, PIC, similarity scaling
Modern space missions depend more and more on electric propulsion devices for in-space flights. The superior efficiency by ionizing the feedgas and propelling them using electric fields with regard to conventional chemical thrusters makes them a great alternative. To find optimized thruster designs is of high importance for industrial applications. Building new prototypes is very expensive and takes a lot of time. A cheaper alternative is to rely on computer simulations to get a deeper understanding of the underlying physics. In order to gain a realistic simulation the whole system has to be taken into account including the channel and the plume region. Because numerical models have to resolve the smallest time and spatial scales, simulations take up an unfeasible amount of time. Usually a self-similarity scaling scheme is used to greatly speed up these simulations. Until now the limits of this method have not been thoroughly discussed. Therefore, this thesis investigates the limits and the influence of the self-similarity scheme on simulations of ion thrusters. The aim is to validate the self-similarity scaling and to look for application oriented tools to use for thruster design optimization. As a test system the High-Efficiency-Multistage-Plasma thruster (HEMP-T) is considered. To simulate the HEMP-T a fully kinetic method is necessary. For low-temperature plasmas, as found in the HEMP-T, the Particle-in-Cell (PIC) method has proven to be the best choice. Unfortunately, ...
Scaling laws in thruster physics
2021
1 Online-Ressource (PDF-Datei: 117 Seiten, 9793 Kilobyte)
Illustrationen (farbig), Diagramme (farbig)
Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 43-46
Theses
Electronic Resource
English
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