pdFOAM: A PIC-DSMC code for near-Earth plasma-body interactions

Capon, Christopher; Brown, Melrose; White, Craig; Scanlon, Thomas; Boyce, Russell

doi:10.1016/j.compfluid.2017.03.020

Cited by 27 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Over time this will lead to a loss of physical fidelity. Similar was observed by Capon et al [8], which implemented a cell average method and a related volume weighting method and showed an inaccuracy in the velocity of a single electron oscillating around an ion, when using the cell average method.…”

Section: Plasma Oscillationsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…It is implemented using a discontinuous Galerkin spectral element method and has a wide range of applications ranging form laser plasma interaction to the simulation of re-entry vehicles. pdFoam developed by Capon et al [8] is an OpenFOAM based hybrid electrostatic PIC solver, which is used to study the interaction of near earth objects and space environment. The code operates by approximating the electron particle distribution as fluid using the Boltzmann relation but can also handle fully kinetic simulation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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picFoam: An OpenFOAM based electrostatic Particle-in-Cell solver

Kühn,

Groll

2020

Preprint

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picFoam is a fully kinetic electrostatic Particle-in-Cell(PIC) solver, including Monte Carlo Collisions(MCC), for non-equilibrium plasma research in the open-source framework of OpenFOAM. The solver's modular design, based on the same principles used in OpenFOAM, makes it highly flexible, by allowing the user to choose different methods at run time, and extendable, by building upon templated modular classes. The implementation of the PIC method employing the finite volume method, allows it to simulate on arbitrary geometries in one to three dimensions. OpenFOAM's barycentric particle tracking is used effectively to performe charge and field weighting from the Lagrangian particle based description to the Eulerian field description and backwards without computational expensive particle searching algorithm. picFoam also includes open and general circuit boundary models for the description of real plasma devices.

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Section: Plasma Oscillationsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

picFoam: An OpenFOAM based electrostatic Particle-in-Cell solver

Kühn,

Groll

2020

Preprint

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“…Depending on the satellite potential, the ionospheric plasma surrounding the satellite or rocket may be influenced, and a plasma nonuniform region called a sheath is created near the surface to shield the satellite charging (e.g. [7] [11]). The thickness of the plasma sheath is of the order of the plasma Debye length.…”

Section: Y Miyake Is With Education Center On Computational Science Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[4][5]), numerical simulations (e.g. [6] [7]) and rocket and satellite experiments in space (e.g. [8][9]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Study of Plasma Depletion Region in a Satellite Wake

Usui

Miloch

Ito

2019

IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci.

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We demonstrated the existence of a distorted plasma depletion region in a satellite wake through threedimensional electrostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) plasma simulations. It is commonly known that a wake is formed in the downstream region of a satellite in a magnetized plasma flow. Our simulation shows that the plasma depletion region in the wake is distorted in the plane perpendicular to the static magnetic field. This distortion is asymmetric with respect to the plasma flow direction in the satellite rest frame of reference. We found that the asymmetric structure of the plasma depletion region is caused by non-uniform local drift motion of electrons around the depletion region. By test particle simulations in which electron trajectories are traced in fixed fields obtained in the PIC simulation, we confirmed that cold electrons which have a Larmor radius less than the size of the satellite can cause the asymmetric structure of the plasma depletion in the wake.

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“…All simulation code used in this study was built in the OpenFoam framework [31]. OpenFOAM is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) toolbox written in C++, containing a range of solvers for partial differential equations.…”

Section: Chapter 2 Pic Simulation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mixed flow ionospheric aerodynamics

Watson¹

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The increasingly congested near earth environment requires accurate or-bital modelling to prevent collision events that threaten access to spaceinfrastructure. Ionospheric aerodynamics are the largest non-conservativesource of orbital perturbations. Work done by Capon et al provideda prediction method for drag forces on charged bodies in low earth orbitbased on applying approximations of single species flows to representa-tive plasma simulations. Recent work on mixed species plasma sheaths[2][3] motivates investigation of this assumption. Mixed species plasma flows over charged bodies with representative LEOconditions were simulated, focusing on orbital motion limited O+ dom-inated flows, and sheath limited H+ dominated flows. The significanceof small concentrations of different ion species was analysed in terms ofaerodynamic effects on the body. Introduction of small concentrations ofH+ into a flow dominated by O+ molecules showed significant disrup-tions to the wake structure, coupled with an increase in drag coefficientfor a satellite in that flow. Introducing heavier O+ molecules into a sheathdominated H+ flow found little disruption to the wake structure. A multi-species drag model was proposed, building on work in. Thismodel was found to qualitatively describe changes in wake structure, butconsistently over predicted drag coefficients. This finding suggests thatthe influence of mixed species flows on ionospheric aerodynamics involvessignificant contributions from inter-species interactions not described ad-equately by considering the separate species as either separate flows, orone flow with adjusted parameters.

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pdFOAM: A PIC-DSMC code for near-Earth plasma-body interactions

Cited by 27 publications

References 46 publications

picFoam: An OpenFOAM based electrostatic Particle-in-Cell solver

picFoam: An OpenFOAM based electrostatic Particle-in-Cell solver

Numerical Study of Plasma Depletion Region in a Satellite Wake

Mixed flow ionospheric aerodynamics

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