Numerical Study of Low-Power MPD Arcjet

In spite of many experimental studies of low-power applied-field magnetoplasmadynamic (AFMPD) thrusters, thrust efficiencies of the past thrusters are very low. Hence, drastic improvement in thrust performance is required for AF-MPD thrusters to compete against other types of electric propulsion in a moderate power regime around 10 kW. For the optimization of AF-MPD thrusters, a numerical code for the flowfield simulation is now under development. A preliminary result shows that the code can deal with a complicated mixture of the induced and applied magnetic fields, which will lead to a combination of the self-field, swirl, Hall, as well as electrothermal accelerations.