Ablation excited by current pulses is a very critical physical process in pulse plasma thrusters(PPT).Its effects on wall-plasma interaction directly determine the PPT performances.In order to reveal the process of the ablated wall interaction with the discharge plasma in PPT,ablation models formulated by three different boundary conditions at the wall-plasma interface are studied.These are the two widely used high-speed evaporation models(Model-L and Model-M),and the recently developed Keida-Zaghloul model(Model-K)of the Knudsen layer that takes into account the internal degrees of freedom on the energy flux conservation.First,fundamental mechanisms of the three ablation models are clarified by comparative analysis in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the wall-plasma interaction.Then,the applicability of different ablation models with the numerical solutions of LES-6 PPT is investigated in detail using magnetohydrodynamic(MHD)modeling.Results show that Model-L and Model-M are actually special cases of Model-K when a simplified jump conditions limited by high velocity at the vapor/plasma interface is used;A ratio of ablation rate in Model-L to that in Model-M is about 0.8at the same wall surface temperature,while it rises to 1 at different surface temperature determined by Model-L and Model-M in PPT.Even though Model-K solution requires significant computational time,it shows more accurate ablation feature for the wall-plasma interaction and possesses better computing precision of impulse bit during post-pulse which is useful for future studies of the late time ablation.
YANG Lei LIU Xiangyang WANG Siyu XIE Kan WU Zhiwen WANG Ningfei
针对低速临近空间飞行器提出了一种新型吸气式电推进方案,该方案采用单介质阻挡放电(SDBD)作为等离子体源,因此能在较大气压范围(数Pa^1atm)内电离大气产生等离子体并产生推力。为探究该吸气式电推进方案的推力性能,测量了实验样机在多个气压和电压条件下产生的推力。推力测量结果显示在10~90 k Pa气压范围内,实验样机产生的推力在102~103μN量级;气压一定时,产生的推力与驱动电压呈幂次相关;而电压一定时,随着气压自1atm逐渐降低,产生的推力先增大后减小,且达到最大推力的气压与所加驱动电压相关。
