Tightly Coupled Mechanistic Study of Materials in the Extreme Space Environment

Abstract

The Tightly Coupled Mechanistic Study of Materials in the Extreme Space Environment Group has worked to examine spacecraft contamination issues from the perspective of non-equilibrium gas dynamics (Levin), material response at the atomistic level (Rajan), high fidelity gas-surface chemistry models (van Duin), and experiments to characterize and test spacecraft material damage by small source ion bombardment (Sedwick). The goals of the group have been ambitious given the multi-length and time-scale facets that make this problem tremendously challenging. The length scales of contamination vary by probably twelve orders of magnitude and the variation in time scales is similar. The group has had a number of successes, described in 43 journal and conference papers that have been published or are in progress. We established collaborations across length scales, ranging from the smallest (Angstroms) to the largest scales. As such, significant progress was made in the development of computational and experimental collaborative frameworks suitable for predicting the spacecraft environment for new propellants and spacecraft materials.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 11, 2016
Accession Number
AD1021359

Entities

People

  • Adrianus Van Duin
  • Deborah Ann Levin
  • Krishna Rajan
  • Mark G. Lewis
  • Raymond Sedwick

Organizations

  • Pennsylvania State University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aging (Materials)
  • Antireflection Coatings
  • Chemistry
  • Data Mining
  • Density Functional Theory
  • Electric Fields
  • Electric Propulsion
  • Fullerenes
  • Graphene
  • Hall Thrusters
  • Hydrogen Embrittlement
  • Ion Thrusters
  • Material Degradation Processes
  • Materials
  • Materials Laboratories
  • Materials Science
  • Materials Testing
  • Mechanical Properties
  • Metallic Nanoparticles
  • Molecular Dynamics
  • Molecular Dynamics Simulations
  • Monte Carlo Method
  • Physical Chemistry
  • Space Environments
  • Surface Chemistry
  • Three Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Quantum Chemistry
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Space