Effects of the magnetic field gradient on the wall power deposition of Hall thrusters

Abstract

The effect of the magnetic field gradient in the discharge channel of a Hall thruster on the ionization of the neutral gas and power deposition on the wall is studied through adopting the 2D-3V particle-in-cell (PIC) and Monte Carlo collisions (MCC) model. The research shows that by gradually increasing the magnetic field gradient while keeping the maximum magnetic intensity at the channel exit and the anode position unchanged, the ionization region moves towards the channel exit and then a second ionization region appears near the anode region. Meanwhile, power deposition on the walls decreases initially and then increases. To avoid power deposition on the walls produced by electrons and ions which are ionized in the second ionization region, the anode position is moved towards the channel exit as the magnetic field gradient is increased; when the anode position remains at the zero magnetic field position, power deposition on the walls decreases, which can effectively reduce the temperature and thermal load of the discharge channel.

Effects of the magnetic field intensity on pole erosion of low-power Hall thrusters

“…The PIC numerical program used in this study is a 2D-3 V PIC-MCC model independently developed by our team [10] and has been used to study low-power Hall thrusters [11,12], discharge channel wall erosion [13,14], and magnetic pole erosion, etc. The concept of macro particle is applied to solve the problem of huge number of particles in model calculation, and each macro particle in the model represents 10 3 -10 9 real particles.…”

Numerical study of the effect of aft-loaded magnetic field on multiple ionizations in Hall thruster

“…A brief introduction of the PIC model is presented below. The details can be found in [25][26][27][28][29][30]. To investigate the topic of this study, the PIC platform is updated by considering the multiple ionization process.…”

Effects of Magnetic Field Gradient on the Performance of a Magnetically Shielded Hall Thruster

“…The radial magnetic flux density keeps increasing axially from the near anode area and reaches its maximum downstream of the channel exit. The maximum magnetic field gradient in Hall thrusters is generally around 1.0-2.6 T/m [4,[29][30][31][32]. Taking this range as a reference, the 1.35 kW MS experimental prototype, of which the maximum of magnetic field gradient is 1.52 T/m, is set as the baseline Case 3.…”

“…The maximum axial gradients of the radial magnetic flux density ranging from 1.2 to 3.33 T/m are listed in Table 2. A wider range of magnetic field gradients, compared with the research performed by Ding [30], has been selected to obtain more obvious results and plasma behaviors at higher gradients.…”