Bremen 2017 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
P: Fachverband Plasmaphysik
P 18: Theory and Modeling II
P 18.3: Talk
Wednesday, March 15, 2017, 15:15–15:30, HS 2010
Scaling laws for a High Efficiency Multistage Plasma Thruster — •Tim Brandt1,3,4, Ralf Schneider2, Julia Duras2,6, Daniel Kahnfeld2, Franz Georg Hey5, Frank Jansen1, Thomas Trottenberg4, Holger Kersten4, Johann Ulrich5, and Claus Braxmaier1,3 — 1DLR, Institute of Space Systems, Bremen, Germany — 2Institute of Physics, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University Greifswald, Germany — 3Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity, University of Bremen, Germany — 4Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, University of Kiel, Germany — 5Airbus Defence and Space, Claude-Dornierstraße 1, Immenstaad, Germany — 6Department of Applied Mathematics, Physics and Humanities, Nuremberg Institute of Technology, Germany
Upcoming formation flying space missions have unprecedented requirements in both low thrust and low noise-to-thrust ratio for attitude control. With the recent discovery of gravitational waves, LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) is an outstanding example for such a mission. Its requirements are thrust no more than 100 µN and root of the noise spectral density ≤ 0.1 µN/√Hz. One attempt to reach this regime is to develop a downscaled version of the High Efficiency Multistage Plasma Thruster (HEMPT). One part of this activity is to support the development by computer modeling. In order to simulate the thruster plasma, the Particle-in-Cell (PiC) method is used. We will present analytical considerations and models using the PiC method for a downscaled and an unscaled HEMPT which has been performed in order to investigate the scaling laws of this kind of plasma thruster.