Three Dimensional Simulation of Ion Thruster Plume-Spacecraft Interaction Based on a Graphic Processor Unit

Based on the three-dimensional particle-in-cell （PIC） method and Compute Unified Device Architecture （CUDA）, a parallel particle simulation code combined with a graphic processor unit （GPU） has been developed for the simulation of charge-exchange （CEX） xenon ions in the plume of an ion thruster. Using the proposed technique, the potential and CEX plasma distribution are calculated for the ion thruster plume surrounding the DS1 spacecraft at different thrust levels. The simulation results are in good agreement with measured CEX ion parameters reported in literature, and the CPU＇s results are equal to a CPU＇s. Compared with a single CPU Intel Core 2 E6300, 16-processor GPU NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT indicates a speedup factor of 3.6 when the total macro particle number is 1.1 × 10^6. The simulation results also reveal how the back flow CEX plasma affects the spacecraft floating potential, which indicates that the plume of the ion thruster is indeed able to alleviate the extreme negative floating potentials of spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit.

图形处理器并行计算用于离子发动机粒子模拟

为了研究离子发动机羽流对航天器的影响,采用质点网格-蒙特卡罗碰撞方法对离子发动机羽流中的交换电荷离子进行了模拟。利用计算设备统一架构技术,开发出一套基于图形处理器的并行粒子模拟程序。随机数生成采用并行MT19937伪随机数生成器算法,电场方程使用完全近似存储格式的代数多重网格法求解。r-z轴对称坐标系中,在z=0 m处获得的电流密度均值为4.5×10^-5A/m^2,图形处理器所得结果与中央处理器模拟结果吻合。在16核心的NVIDIA GeForce 9400 GT图形显示卡上,取得相对于Intel Core 2 E6300中央处理器4.5-10.0倍的加速比。