Abstract
Hall thruster is a kind of plasma optics device, which is used mainly in space propulsion. To simulate the discharge process of plasma and the performance of a 5 kW hall thruster, a two-dimensional PIC-MCC model in the R-Z plane is built. In the model, the anomalous diffusion of the electrons including Bohm diffusion and near-wall conduction is modeled. The Bohm diffusion is modeled by using a Brownian motion instead of the Bohm collision method and the near-wall conduction is modeled by a secondary electron emission model. In addition to the elastic, excitation, and ionization collisions between electrons and neutral atoms, the Coulomb collisions are included. The plasma discharge process including the transient oscillation and steady state oscillation is well reproduced. First, the influence of the discharge voltage and magnetic field on the steady state oscillation is simulated. The oscillation amplitude increases as the discharge voltage gets larger at first, and then decreases. While the oscillation amplitude decreases as the magnetic field gets stronger at first, and then increases. Later, the influence of the discharge voltage and mass flow rate on the performance of the thruster is simulated. When the mass flow rate is constant, the total efficiency initially increases with the discharge voltage, reaches the maximum at 600 V, and then declined. When the discharge voltage is constant, the total efficiency increases as the mass flow rate rises from 10 to 15 mg/s. Finally, a comparison between simulated and experimental performance reveals that the largest deviation is within 15%, thereby indirectly validating the accuracy of the model.
Highlights
Hall electric propulsion is one of the most mature and widely used electric propulsion technologies (Pidgeon, 2006; Mathers et al, 2009)
The LHT-140 Hall thruster is similar to the 5 kW P5 Hall thruster (Vincent, 2002), and the Debye length of 0.02 mm in reference (Vincent, 2002) is used in our model
The performance of LHT140 was well predicted by the built model with a deviation of less than 15% compared with the experimental results, while the deviation was mainly caused by the background pressure of the vacuum chamber. Both discharge voltage and propellant mass flow rate have a great influence on the performance of the thruster
Summary
Hall electric propulsion is one of the most mature and widely used electric propulsion technologies (Pidgeon, 2006; Mathers et al, 2009). The discharge characteristics of the plasma and the performance of a hall thruster are evaluated mainly by conducting high–cost and time–consuming experiments. As research on plasma discharge mechanism becomes in depth and numerical methods improve continuously, simulation plays an increasely important role in understanding the micro physical process of hall thruster (Arkhipov and Bishaev, 2007; Hofer, 2008; Zhang et al, 2011; Zhang et al, 2014). Lentz built a one-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) model (Lentz, 1993) and simulated the plasma characteristics and performance of a Japanese hall thruster. Martinez–Sanchez and Ahedo studied axial plasma discharge oscillation by using a one-dimensional PIC model (Noguchi et al, 1999). Hirakawa built a two-dimensional PIC model (Hirakawa and Arakawa, 1996) and simulated the electron diffusion. Beidler (1999), Szabo (2001), Sullivan (2004) and Adam et al (2004) improved the simulation method continuously
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