Physical optimisation of ion thruster plume behaviour

离子推进器羽流行为的物理优化

• 批准号: 2770335
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2770335
• 关键词: Physical; optimisation; ion; thruster; plume

Ion thrusters can be used on a variety of space missions, with applications including precision pointing, orbital adjustments, constellation control and maintenance, debris removal and deep-space exploration. Due to several demonstrator missions illustrating their reliability and cost benefits, there has been an increase in investigation and growth in the ion thruster sector and in the electric propulsion in space sector. The goals of this research project include the total overall efficiency in respect to the performance of the thruster and to develop a novel thrust vectoring mechanism. The thrust vectoring will further optimise the spread of the plume that is formed by the ions leaving the thruster, by changing the physical design of existing ion thrusters and therefore, further develop current state of the art technology. This will result in aiding overall possible mission application due to the thrust vectoring mechanism. Being able to minimize or control the formation of plasma sheath around a spacecraft and other degradation effects caused by the ions leaving the thruster, will result in the spacecraft being operational for a longer period.Aims and ObjectivesThis research aims to modify and optimise the current design of state-of-the-art ion thrusters, with amixture of plasma physics, numerical modelling, artificial intelligence, and general aerospace engineering approach to maximise performance, efficiency, and lifetime. Modified ion thruster designs will be proposed by setting an initial criterion to adapt to current existing CubeSat dimensions, and evaluated to choose the most efficient design. These simulations will be performed in a 3D numerical code which will be developed at the start of the project, and consequently a study will be performed to choose the optimum numerical methods to model the plasma physics in the system. Furthermore, the use of artificial intelligence will be explored later in the project, to perform not only design optimisations, but also a type of time-series forecasting to predict the sheath formation and other degradation effects present in the spacecraft caused by long-term use of an ion thruster. This research project will address the following questions:What is the best numerical method to simulate the ion thruster mechanism?What is the optimum algorithm for particle interaction modelling for this application?How can the propulsive efficiency and plume behaviour of current state of the art ion thruster technology be improved?What effect on the environment will different propellants in the new thruster have?How will the performance of the thruster vary whilst changing altitude in a low Earth orbit and how does this compare with existing thrusters?What parameters is the numerical simulation of an ion thruster most sensitive to and how can this be improved?MethodologyThe novelty in the proposed design is that it uses an external piece of hardware to enable thrust vectoring whilst not requiring any redesign of the thruster. Additionally, the use of AI would be a novel approach to electric propulsion modelling, to observe degradation effects over the spacecraft potentially caused by an ion thruster, without having to perform heavy computational simulations.

离子推进器可用于各种空间飞行任务，其应用包括精确指向、轨道调整、星座控制和维护、碎片清除和深空探索。由于几次演示任务证明了它们的可靠性和成本效益，因此在离子推进器部门和空间部门的电推进方面的研究和增长有所增加。该研究项目的目标包括总的整体效率方面的性能的推力器，并开发一种新的推力矢量机构。通过改变现有离子推进器的物理设计，推力矢量将进一步优化由离开推进器的离子形成的羽流的扩散，从而进一步发展现有技术。由于推力矢量机构，这将有助于整个可能的使命应用。能够最小化或控制航天器周围等离子体鞘层的形成以及由离子离开推进器引起的其他退化效应，将导致航天器在更长的时间内运行。和通用航空航天工程方法，以最大限度地提高性能，效率和寿命。修改后的离子推进器设计将通过设定初始标准来适应当前现有的立方体卫星尺寸，并进行评估以选择最有效的设计。这些模拟将在项目开始时开发的3D数值代码中进行，因此将进行研究以选择最佳数值方法来模拟系统中的等离子体物理。此外，在该项目的后期将探索人工智能的使用，不仅进行设计优化，而且进行一种时间序列预测，以预测鞘层的形成和长期使用离子推进器造成的航天器中存在的其他退化效应。本研究计画将探讨下列问题：模拟离子推进器机制的最佳数值方法是什么？对于这种应用，粒子相互作用模型的最佳算法是什么？如何提高目前最先进的离子推进器技术的推进效率和羽流特性？新推进器中的不同推进剂会对环境产生什么影响？在低地球轨道上改变高度时，推进器的性能会如何变化，与现有的推进器相比如何？离子推进器的数值模拟对什么参数最敏感，如何改进？方法所提出的设计的新颖之处在于，它使用了一个外部的硬件，使推力矢量，而不需要任何重新设计的推力器。此外，人工智能的使用将是电推进建模的一种新方法，可以观察离子推进器可能引起的航天器退化效应，而无需进行繁重的计算模拟。