Multi-plume flow simulation of small bipropellant thrusters using parallel DSMC method

Abstract

As a plume gas exhausted from a bipropellant thruster contains several kinds of chemical compositions, it has been identified as a critical source of heating and contamination on surfaces and components outside a satellite because it can degrade optical properties and performance gradually. Thus, accurate evaluations of the plume gas behaviors from the bipropellant thrusters and their influences on a satellite are necessary from an initial development phase of a satellite through a numerical simulation. In this regard, the present study intended to investigate multiple plume gas behaviors of the bipropellant thrusters with several kinds of gas compositions simultaneously and then to evaluate its influence on a solar panel of a geosynchronous (GEO) satellite numerically. To simulate complex multiple plume flow regimes efficiently, a combined approach of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and parallelized Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) was adopted to consider a continuum flow and a rarefied flow condition, respectively. Throughout the present numerical analysis results, multiple plume gas influences from three different bipropellant thrusters were evaluated on a three-dimensional satellite configuration with a large solar panel.