The Influence of Particulates on Thruster Plume / Shock Layer Interaction at High Altitudes

Abstract

A two-phase plume flow from a small aluminized propellant side thruster interacting with rarefied atmosphere at 120 km has been examined numerically. A three step continuum-kinetic approach has been used, with the Navier-Stokes equations solved inside the nozzle, and a 2D/3D DSMC method employed to compute the plume nearfield and then the plume-atmosphere interaction region. At each of these steps, a two-way gas-particulate coupling has been used. The DSMC implementation uses molecular fluxes to calculate the number of gas-particulate collisions, and is based on a statistical approach to calculate deflection angles. A sensitivity study of various parameters of the approach is performed. The importance of two-way coupling, particle radiative cooling, and molecule accommodation on particle surface are analyzed.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA433926

Entities

People

  • Alina A. Alexeenko
  • Dean C. Wadsworth
  • Natalia E. Gimelshein
  • Sergey F. Gimelshein

Organizations

  • University of Southern California

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Altitude
  • Aluminized Propellants
  • Aluminum Oxides
  • Atmospheres
  • Chemical Reactions
  • Collisions
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Equations
  • Gas Flow
  • High Altitude
  • Liquid Propellants
  • Particle Collisions
  • Particles
  • Propellants
  • Propulsion Systems
  • Specific Heat
  • Three Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Aerospace Propulsion Engineering.
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Plasma Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Hall-Effect Thruster