Influence of neutral gas supply position on wall erosion of Hall thruster studied by particle-in-cell simulation


 In this work, we have carried out the simulation study on the discharge process of Hall thruster under the conditions of different neutral gas radial supply positions based on particle-in-cell method (PIC) and Monte Carlo collision method (MCC). This paper compares the two-dimensional (2D) distributions of neutral gas, plasma and the distributions of wall erosion related parameters under different neutral gas supply positions. The comparison results show that the change of the neutral gas supply position will affect the radial distribution uniformity of the neutral gas and plasma in the channel. From the comparison of the density peaks, it can be found that the neutral gas density and the plasma density peak under the upper gas supply condition are relatively low, and the plasma density peak is 22.49% lower than the density peak under the middle gas supply condition. Meanwhile, as the radial position of the gas supply moves from the lower gas supply to the upper gas supply, the position of the ionization zone also gradually moves toward the anode. The comparison results of erosion related parameter distribution show that the change of gas supply location has obvious influence on erosion rate and erosion range. In terms of erosion rate, the wall erosion rate is relatively low under the upper gas supply condition, and the peak erosion rates of inner and outer walls are 33.3% and 29.9% lower than those under the other two conditions. In terms of erosion range, the gas supply position moves from the lower gas supply position to the upper gas supply position, the erosion range gradually increases from 5 to 7.5 mm.