Numerical Prediction of Grid Erosion of Ion Engine

概要

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With the increase of long-term space missions, the evaluation of lifetime of ion engines by numerical analyses becomes important. In order to develop a numerical code for the evaluation of ion engine lifetime, JIEDI (JAXA Ion Engine Development Initiative) tool development has been started. To evaluate the validities of boundary conditions such as upstream discharge region and downstream region conditions, a 3-dimensional full-particle code was developed. In the present study, the effects of the electron mass model introduced for shortening the calculation time were investigated. We found that there are differences in the distributions of charged particles and electric potential profiles in the downstream region among different electron masses. Consequently, the effects of electron mass on the energy peak of the ions impacting on the grid and the erosion distribution on the downstream surface of the accel grid were observed.