Computer Simulation of a Plasma Accelerator

Watson, Val

doi:10.21236/ad0855170

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…After leaving the thermal heating and expansion region, the plasma enters the collisionless acceleration region. Particle in cell simulations by Watson et al 4 and more recently by Poehlmann et al 2 show that in the collisionless acceleration region the fully magnetized ions drift through a negative magnetic pressure gradient. During this drifting motion, the Larmor radius increases until the ions are released from their cyclotron orbits.…”

Section: B Collisionless Acceleration Regionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Operation of a Coaxial High Energy (CHENG) Thruster

Poehlmann¹,

Gascon²,

Thomas³

et al. 2006

42nd AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference &Amp;amp; Exhibit

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The Coaxial High ENerGy (CHENG) Thruster is a high power coaxial pulsed plasma accelerator that was first proposed in 1970 by D.Y. Cheng. Reported exhaust velocities on the order of 10 6 m/s, thrust densities on the order of 10 5 N/m 2 and low erosion rates make this thruster attractive for a variety of space missions. However, little work has been published since 1970 and the acceleration mechanism is not well understood. Therefore, the concept was recently reintroduced to the electric propulsion community with the goal of building scaled down versions that can operate at lower energy levels and higher pulse rates. This paper gives an overview of the design of a 3kJ CHENG thruster and first experimental results from its operation.

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Section: B Collisionless Acceleration Regionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…The only theoretical description of this co-axial discharge that is published in the open literature is that presented by Cheng 1,3 and Watson 4 . An extensive summary of these existing theoretical and numerical models was published in a previous paper 2 .…”

Section: Existing Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Operation of a Coaxial High Energy (CHENG) Thruster

Poehlmann¹,

Gascon²,

Thomas³

et al. 2006

42nd AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference &Amp;amp; Exhibit

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The effects of numerical acceleration techniques on PIC-MCC simulations of ion thrusters

et al. 2020

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The particle-in-cell-Monte Carlo collision method has been widely used in simulation studies of ion thrusters. Due to the huge computational demand of such simulations, numerical acceleration techniques are required. However, the effects of such numerical acceleration techniques on the simulation results are not clear. In this study, the effects of three numerical acceleration techniques are investigated using a series of simulations that implement different numerical acceleration factors. The resulting plasma potentials, plasma density distributions, and plasma currents in the discharge chamber are compared for simulations accelerated by increasing the vacuum permittivity, reducing the mass of heavy particles, and making use of self-similarity. The results demonstrate that increasing the permittivity thickens the sheath. When the sheath expands enough to extend to the cusps, the distributions of the potentials and the plasma densities are affected, influencing the current parameters. Reducing the masses of heavy particles greatly influences ion properties, especially the plasma density. Thus, it causes significant errors in the potential and current parameters. Errors in the beam current can be significantly decreased by correcting the beam current using an exponent relationship between the mass scaling factor and the plasma density. The use of self-similarity simultaneously thickens the sheath and decreases the particle number density and may slightly reduce the plasma current values. A number of suggestions for employing these techniques are also provided.

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Computer Simulation of a Plasma Accelerator

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Operation of a Coaxial High Energy (CHENG) Thruster

Operation of a Coaxial High Energy (CHENG) Thruster

The effects of numerical acceleration techniques on PIC-MCC simulations of ion thrusters

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