Abstract
Accurate sheath modeling is of considerable interest to the effective design of ionized flow in several aerospace applications including space propulsion thrusters and high-speed air vehicles. In particular, an electrode sheath (fall) voltage model is necessary to predict the power requirement, which in turn is used to measure the total efficiency for on-board propulsion thrusters. Plasma wall interaction is thus crucial for improving the high power thruster efficiency. In this paper, a finite element discretized two-dimensional self-consistent formulation of plasma–sheath dynamics, using multi-fluid equations for partially ionized plasma, is presented. The formulation is applied to a simplistic electrode model. Computed potential distributions on three locations along the electrode are plotted. The details of the number densities of electrons, ions and neutrals along with ion, electron and neutral dynamics, sheath potential and electron temperature profiles gives insight into the wall potential loss mechanism.
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