Abstract
Ion thruster's plume can bring serious contamination to satellite, especially the molybdenum (Mo) charge-exchange (CEX) ions in plume. Therefore, it is critical to describe the emission and movement of Mo atoms appropriately for the prediction of plume pollution. In this paper, a 3D Mo source model is constructed based on grid erosion. In this model, the emission of Mo atom is given by the erosion rate of grid. Then by using a 3D plume particle model and the 3D Mo source model, the Mo CEX ions of LIPS-300 ion thruster is calculated. The influences of the non-uniformity of upstream plasma, the CEX collision, and the Mo atom initial distribution on the Mo CEX ion distribution are considered. The results show that the above aspects have a significant effect on the distribution of Mo CEX ions. The simulation results of Mo CEX ions obtained by this paper's model are also compared with those based on the commonly used empirical hypothesis of Mo atoms. It is shown that the results based on empirical hypothesis are similar to those under the uniform initial distribution of Mo atoms, and the range of Mo CEX ion distribution is increased.
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