Numerical prediction of wall erosion on a Hall thruster

Hall thrusters are promising space propulsion options for spacecraft. Current major interest in Hall thrusters is their life time evaluation for long time operation. Sputtering erosion of the insulation wall determines the life time of the thrusters. In this study, we present two-dimensional Hybrid-PIC modeling of Hall thrusters, which predicts the wall erosion effect. The principle challenges of our modeling is (1) solving both the plasma generation and acceleration in the channel and the exhaust plume in the near field of the exit and (2) predicting the channel erosion by ion sputtering with deforming the calculation grid. As a result, it was shown that the modeling simulated successive operations and wall erosions by ion sputtering during 2000 h operation of a Hall thruster.