Development of a scalable gas-dynamics solver with adaptive mesh refinement

There are various computational physics areas in which Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) and Particle in Cell (PIC) methods are being employed. The accuracy of results from such simulations depend on the fidelity of the physical models being used. The computationally demanding nature of these problems make them ideal candidates to make use of modern supercomputers. The software developed to run such simulations also needs special attention so that the maintainability and extendability is considered with the recent numerical methods and programming paradigms. Suited for gas-dynamics problems, a software called SUGAR (Scalable Unstructured Gas dynamics with Adaptive mesh Refinement) has recently been developed and written in C++ and MPI. Physical and numerical models were added to this framework to simulate ion thruster plumes. SUGAR is used to model the charge-exchange (CEX) reactions occurring between the neutral and ion species as well as the induced electric field effect due to ions. Multiple adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) meshes were used in order to capture different physical length scales present in the flow. A multiple-thruster configuration was run to extend the studies to cases for which there is no axial or radial symmetry present that could only be modeled with a three-dimensional simulation capability. The combined plume structure showed interactions between individual thrusters where AMR capability captured this in an automated way. The back flow for ions was found to occur when CEX and momentum-exchange (MEX) collisions are present and strongly enhanced when the induced electric field is considered. The ion energy distributions in the back flow region were obtained and it was found that the inclusion of the electric field modeling is the most important factor in determining its shape. The plume back flow structure was also examined for a triple-thruster, 3-D geometry case and it was found that the ion velocity in the back flow region appears to be roughly independent of the number of thrusters. The influence of solar cell panel voltage on backflow flux is evaluated using a combined commercial software generated potential with the induced potential and the influence of gas-surface interactions is studied. Finally, ion thruster plumes were simulated for vacuum and chamber configurations to characterize changes in the flow field.