Numerical Simulation Of Hall Thruster Plume

Because of its long lifetime and high specific impulse, Hall thruster has been widely used for satellite orbital maintenance, resistance compensation and deep space exploration task of spacecraft. Hall thruster has become the research focus in the field of aeronautics propulsion. Different from the chemical thruster, the plume of Hall thruster is plasma that creats a electromagnetic field atmosphere and interacts with the surface of spacecraft, which affects the working performance of spacecraft. In this paper, a simulation model is developed for the plume in a Hall thruster to investigate the interaction between Hall thruster plume and spacecraft.A three-dimensional IFE-PIC-MCC of Hall thruster plume is developed. The distribution and movement of the particles in the plume is calculated. The interaction between Charge Exchange ions in the plume of Hall thruster and the surface of the SMART-1 spacecraft is investigated, with the emphasis on the effect of the disturbance force and thermal loading caused by(CEX) impingement on the surface of the spacecraft. The DSMC method is applied to model the interaction between neutral atoms. The PIC-MCC method is used to simulate the generation and movement of CEX ions. Electric field in the plume is obtained by solving the Poisson’s equation which is calculated by Boltzmann method and IFE method. The results are compared and analyzed.The parameters such as heat flux and forces of CEX ions which impinge on SMART-1 and solar arrays are obtained through calculating of the velocity, position and energy of the impinging CEX ions. The simulation results show that as the solar array rotation angle increases, both the disturbance force on the spacecraft and the average energy on solar arrays decrease substantially. Solar array s receive the least thermal heating from the CEX ions when the beam ions flow is perpendicular to the solar array plane. With the increment of the divergence angle, both the disturbance force and the average energy on the surface of spacecraft are slightly changed under same solar array rotation angle conditions, whereas the disturbance force in the main body has a slight rise. However, the maximum disturbance force is less than 1% of the nominal value of the main thrust.