Comparison of ANSYS CFD Simulations and Experimental Measurements of Gas Density in Plasma Thruster

Cheng Chang Hsu^1*, Te-Yueh Chen¹, Po-Yu Chang¹, Yao-Li Liu¹

¹ISAPS, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan

* Presenter:Cheng Chang Hsu, email:la6101026@gs.ncku.edu.tw

A plasma thruster is an electric propulsion system that generates thrust by utilizing plasma as the propellant. The gas density of propellant forms the fundamental metric for assessing the thrust produced by a plasma thruster. According to the plasma thruster design of Professor Po-Yu Chang at NCKU, we simulate the flow field using their nozzle model of the plasma thruster, employing the SST k-omega model and the SIMPLEC algorithm with a transient approach. The device comprises four principal components: a central channel that constitutes the nozzle, with an entrance diameter of 2.5 mm, a throat diameter of 0.5 mm, and a length of 2 mm. In addition, the nozzle features an entrance channel 10 mm long and 2.5 mm in diameter, and an exit channel 5 mm long and 2.5 mm in diameter. The apparatus is situated within a vacuum chamber maintained at 1.3x10^-4 Pa, with an applied pressure of 10 atm at the inlet to initiate the flow of argon gas. Our objective was to acquire the gas density at the exit of the device. We then compare the simulation results with experimental measurement data and obtain strong evidence that the two are in agreement.

Keywords: Plasma Thruster, ANSYS, Computational Fluid Dynamics