Studies Of Electromagnetic Characterization Of Ion Thruster Plume With Particle-in-Cell/Monte Carlo Simulation

Ion thruster has many advantages, such as high specific impulse, long life and so on. It has been applied in the space mission of GEO satellite position keeping, orbit transfer, attitude control, deep space exploration and so on. The speed of charge-exchange ion of the ion thruster plume is lower, which is greatly influenced by the self-consistent electromagnetic field of the plume, and the charge-exchange ion will affect the life and performance of the spacecraft. Therefore, it is very important to study the characteristics of ion thruster plume. At present, there are many methods to study the plume, and the numerical simulation method is a fast and efficient method.This paper uses 2D3V electromagnetic PIC/MCC model were studied by numerical simulation of ion thruster plume characteristics, considering the charged particle transport, time-varying electromagnetic field evolution, charged particles and self-consistent electromagnetic field interactions, charge exchange collisions and neutralizer and other physical processes.The research work of this thesis includes:1. Firstly, the application background of electric propulsion is briefly introduced;secondly, the working principle of ion thruster and the main components of ion thruster plume are described; finally, the research methods of plume and the numerical simulation of plume at home and abroad are introduced;2. Three kinds of numerical simulation methods are introduced , such as particle model, fluid model and hybrid model. Based on the summary of the research on numerical simulation of plume, the plume numerical simulation research mostly used static model, did not consider effects of the plume electromagnetic and time-varying electromagnetic fields, the electromagnetic PIC/MCC model is used to simulate the plume expansion;3. According to the numerical simulation of the demand of ion thruster plume, a two-dimensional axisymmetric coordinate physical model is established, the simulation model of 2D3V electromagnetic PIC/MCC is used , then, the simulation algorithm is deduced, which mainly include: time-varying electromagnetic field of the plume was solving by the Maxwell equations; charged particles the movement was solving by Bird sall’s-Landon’s method; Zigzag method was used to calculate the current source;the process of particle collision simulation was used to Monte Carlo method;4. On the basis of the numerical simulation software BUMBLEBEE, the two-dimensional solution of ion thruster plume is developed. After running the solver,we get the result, such as the charged particle trajectory, time-varying electromagnetic field and current source evolution process, and a detailed analysis of the return movement of the charge exchange process and electron neutralizer and ion beam.