Numerical model for axisymmetric inductively coupled plasma (ICP) in radio-frequency (RF) ion thrusters

Abstract

A numerical model is developed to evaluate the inductively coupled plasma properties in a 2-D axisymmetric domain inside an RF ion thruster discharge chamber. The model is built by incorporating an electromagnetic model with a uid model to describe the plasma. The three species, ions, electrons and neutrals, inside the plasma are modeled assuming that they obey the continuum approach. The spatial distributions of ow parameters are obtained by solving the uid equations with the SIMPLE algorithm using the nite volume discretization. The ow parameters that can be monitored are ion number density, ion velocity in three dimensions, neutral number density, neutral velocity in three dimensions, electron ux, electron temperature, electric potential and electromagnetic elds. The resulting ow parameters are used to evaluate the thruster performance and e ciency. The model presented in this study demonstrates the same tendency with the experimental results from the literature and veri ed through comparison with commercial codes. The code is implemented as a software framework, which is named as AETHER, using C++ programming language. The model lays out that after a certain amount of power deposition, there is a trade-o between the e ciency and the thrust in an RF ion thruster.