Plasma chemistry of main Earth atmospheric components in VLEOs is implemented in a hybrid 2D axisymmetric simulation code to assess the air-breathing concept in an electrodeless plasma thruster.Relevant electron-heavy...Plasma chemistry of main Earth atmospheric components in VLEOs is implemented in a hybrid 2D axisymmetric simulation code to assess the air-breathing concept in an electrodeless plasma thruster.Relevant electron-heavy species collisions for diatomic molecules,and atom associative wall recombination into molecules are included.Simulations are run by injecting 1 mg/s of Xe,N2 and O independently for powers between 10 and 3000 W.The performances and trends of plasma response for N2 and O are similar to Xe but displaced to higher powers.Since they have lighter elementary masses,a higher plasma density is generated and more electrons need to be heated.At optimum power,the thrust efficiency for N2 and O surpasses that of Xe,which is caused by the excess of neutral re-ionization and the associated inelastic and wall losses.Additional simulations are run injecting 50/50 of N2/O to study the thruster operation for propellant mixtures,and the performances are found to be linear combinations of those of each propellant in the absence of collisions between heavy species.Injection of O2 is also studied for the impact of the possible associative recombination of O at the intake walls,and the performances are found similar to those of O due to the strong molecular dissociation inside the thruster.展开更多
基金funded initially by the HIPATIA project of HORIZON 2020(European Commission),Grant No.GA870542completed with funding from the SUPERLEO project(Agencia Estatal de Investigación,Spanish Government),Grant No.TED2021-132484B-I00The stay of J.Zhou at ISTP-CNR is being supported by the program Recualificación del Sistema Universitario Español,Margarita Salas,of the Ministerio de Universidades(Spanish Government)。
文摘Plasma chemistry of main Earth atmospheric components in VLEOs is implemented in a hybrid 2D axisymmetric simulation code to assess the air-breathing concept in an electrodeless plasma thruster.Relevant electron-heavy species collisions for diatomic molecules,and atom associative wall recombination into molecules are included.Simulations are run by injecting 1 mg/s of Xe,N2 and O independently for powers between 10 and 3000 W.The performances and trends of plasma response for N2 and O are similar to Xe but displaced to higher powers.Since they have lighter elementary masses,a higher plasma density is generated and more electrons need to be heated.At optimum power,the thrust efficiency for N2 and O surpasses that of Xe,which is caused by the excess of neutral re-ionization and the associated inelastic and wall losses.Additional simulations are run injecting 50/50 of N2/O to study the thruster operation for propellant mixtures,and the performances are found to be linear combinations of those of each propellant in the absence of collisions between heavy species.Injection of O2 is also studied for the impact of the possible associative recombination of O at the intake walls,and the performances are found similar to those of O due to the strong molecular dissociation inside the thruster.
