An Iterative Tracer Particle Approach for Steady-State Simulation of Electrospray Thruster Plumes

Abstract

Current methods for simulating the evolution of an electrospray thruster plume in the field-free region, while effective, require substantial computational resources. This paper introduces a potentially computationally-efficient alternative, termed the iterative tracer particle method, for simulating the plume of an electrospray thruster in steady state. This method could drastically reduce computational time while providing an approximate solution. Detailed within this work are the method's design, its validation against the traditional n-body method, and the integration of the fragmentation process. For a 2D test case simulation, the iterative tracer particle method required only 30 seconds, achieving a speed that is 1233 times faster than a simplified n-body approach, which took 10.3 hours. The memory-efficient architecture of this method, which resulted in using 3514 times less memory in this specific test case, allows for simulations to be run on personal computers. The efficiency offered by this method could enable the solving of inverse problems to infer thruster emission properties from measurements taken in a laboratory environment.