Kinetic models for plasma transport in the Hall effect thrusters

• Published in: 2002 IEEE International Conference on Record Abstracts and Plasma Science p. 173
• Main Authors: Batishchev, O., Blateau, V., Martinez-Sanchez, M.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2002
• Subjects: Boundary conditions; Computational geometry; Electrons; Hall effect; Ionization; Kinetic theory; Magnetic resonance; Plasma transport processes; Voltage; Xenon
• ISBN: 078037407X; 9780780374072
• DOI: 10.1109/PLASMA.2002.1030384

Summary form only given, as follows. The specifics of plasma transport phenomena in the Hall effect thrusters were a subject of many experimental and numerical studies. We present and discuss results from two different kinetic PIC models. The first one is a model of plasma flow in the SPT-type thruster in the idealized planar approximation. The system is periodic in the transverse coordinate to resemble the azimuthal dimension. We study excitation of collective plasma modes that might be responsible for high-frequency oscillations at 0.1-10 MHz, and anomalous transport observed in the experiment. We also anticipate strong resonance effects for the cases when plasma Debye length is close to the electron gyroradius in the internal magnetic field of a Hall thruster. The second model is a further development of the fully kinetic model for plasma and neutral gas in the 2D3V axisymmetrical approximation. A previously developed computational method is applied to the realistic P-5 thruster geometry. We add new elementary plasma-chemistry reaction and modify boundary conditions to capture self-consistent dynamics of high ionization states of xenon atoms. We study thruster performance at wide range of applied voltages and make comparison to the experimental data.