Release Time:2019-03-11  Hits:

Indexed by: Conference Paper

Date of Publication: 2017-03-06

Included Journals: EI

Abstract: The interaction between the bias electric field of long sail tethers and the plasma is the basic principle and mechanism of the electric sail propulsion. A two dimensional full particle in cell(PIC) model was used to investigate the momentum transfer process between the parallel sail tethers and ionosphere plasma. In this model, the normal incidence of the ionosphere plasma was taken into account. In order to ensure the accuracy and stability of the PIC method, we set 0.7mm as grid space step which smaller than the Debye length and 1.56ns as grid time step which restricted by the plasma frequency and the CFL condition. Main features including the spatial electric potential distribution and ion number density distributions were presented. In addition, the thrust of the electric sail propulsion was analyzed. © 2017, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.