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REPORT DATE (DD-MM-YYYY)
21-09-2012
REPORT TYPE
Technical Report
DATES COVERED
SPONSOR/MONITOR'S REPORTKirtland AFB, NM 87117-5776
NUMBER(S)
AFRL-RV-PS-TR-2012-0209
DISTRIBUTION / AVAILABILITY STATEMENTApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited. (377ABW-2012-1443 dtd 6 Nov 2012)
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES
ABSTRACTIn support of the larger goal to provide a plasma engineering capability to the spacecraft community, the objective of the Spacecraft Charging Modeling-Nascap-2k contract is to develop, incorporate, test, and validate new algorithms for the threedimensional plasma-environment spacecraft interactions computational tool, Nascap-2k. Nascap-2k is being modified to extend the range of plasma physics phenomena that the code can simulate, make the advanced code capabilities more accessible to users, and improve and maintain both the graphical and non-graphical interfaces to the code. The upgraded code is being used to simulate problems of interest to AFRL. During the first year, Nascap-2k 4.1 was modified to specify, and then optionally use, a time-dependent tabular environment in surface charging calculations. The pseudopotential technique to compute volume electron currents was modified to use a finite element approach and to include the magnetic field dependence. The upgraded code is being used to support the DSX (Demonstration and Science eXperiments) and AEHF-2 (Advanced Extremely High Frequency) spacecraft programs.
SUBJECT TERMSNascap-2k, Potentials, Space Environment, Spacecraft, Spacecraft Charging, DSX