A study on Hall Effect Thruster exhaust plume simulation

Abstract: The results of the attempt to simulate a 1,5 kW-class Stationary PlasmaThruster (SPT) type Hall Effect thruster exhaust plumes are presented.This work focuses on the simulation of the near field region since acharged particle can directly affect the other systems of the spacecraft,such as solar panels, camera etc. Hence, it is important to know if itis possible to simulate this process and what level of accuracy can beachieved. The simulation is carried out using Versatile Software Toolfor Rarefied Plasmas (VSTRAP), a 3D kinetic solver currently underdevelopment in SPARC Industries sarl. The SPT-100B thruster and itscathode KN-3B both basic flight models developed by EDB Fakel wereused as a reference for geometry modelling. The modelling was doneusing gmsh, an open-source geometry and mesh generation software.The study shows that potential and DSMC simulations give realisticresults. However, with the computers available today, particle-basedplasma simulations are not possible.