Research Projects

Clustering is favourable because of several merits including a cheaper manufacturing cost, less demanding requirement from test facilities, more robustness and an ability to tolerate failure of single thrusters. The performance of a thruster in a cluster may be different from a standalone situation. One interest is to investigate the plume interactions, especially in the complex and important near field locations. To accurately simulate the plasma plumes from a cluster of Hall thrusters requires an accurate modelling of the complex physical plume mechanism on three-dimensional meshes. Traditionally, the computational simulation of plasma plume flows into vacuum is performed with a hybrid particle-fluid approach. The direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method models the collisions of the heavy particles (ions and atoms) while the Particle In Cell (PIC) method models the transport of the ions in electric fields. This study is intend to simulate the detailed three-dimensional plume structures and plume interactions.