Three Dimensional Numerical Study of Plume Characteristics of Three Dimensional Numerical Study of Plume Characteristics of

摘要

The plume characteristics of a pulsed plasma thruster (PPT) are interested in evaluation of potential plume/spacecraft interactions. This paper aims at the research of the rarified plume of a laboratory PPT and a three dimensional simulation model is developed to simulate unsteady flow field of the plasma plume by the particle-in-cell and direct simulation Monte Carlo hybrid method, the electron momentum equation is simplified and discreted into a seven-point formula with the assumption of isothermal electrons. Then the plasma potential is solved by the alternating direction implicit method. The variations of potential, electron density, ion density, and neutral density versus time are analyzed. And the simulation is verified by comparing the results between the computation and the experiment. The research indicates that the three dimensional model could well predict the parameters of the plume in both parallel and perpendicular planes to the electrodes. The predictions of a three dimensional model are better than those of the exiting axisymmetric model. The results and method of this paper are referable for further study.