Particle-In-Cell Simulation of Heavy Species in Hall Effect Discharge

Abstract

Hall effect thruster (HET) is nowadays one of the most used and attractive electric propulsion (EP) technologies for satellite applications because of its relatively high specific impulse, efficiency, high thrust-to-power ratio, simplicity and possibility to down-scale. The increasing demand for a higher lifetime pushes research efforts toward the optimization of these devices. The erosion of the accelerating channel is the main limiting lifetime phenomena. Computational modelling is commonly used to study it. The behaviour of plasma heavy particles, namely neutrals and ions, has been analysed by means of axisymmetric particle-in-cell (PIC) code, developed to be coupled with a module solving fluid equations for electrons (i.e. hybrid approach for plasma). The PIC module has been developed to work with non-Cartesian mesh to consider the variation of wall profile due to erosion. The discharge within the accelerating channel of the SPT-100 thruster was selected as a cornerstone test because of the great availability of numerical and experimental data. The study shows that the code is able to describe accurately densities and velocities of ions and neutrals, reproducing with consistency the physics within the accelerating channel and near-plume of HETs with eroded and non-eroded walls. profile.