Simulation of rocket plume and lunar dust using DSMC method

When lunar modules land on the Moon, dust impingement on the lunar module components and deposition on the thermal and optical surfaces would cause many serious problems. The emphasis of this research is on simulating the interaction of rocket plume and lunar dust using the direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. The method is extended to model the movement and collision stages of rarefied plume gas and dust particles, including three collisional mechanisms: molecule–molecule, molecule–particle and particle–particle collisions. The reflection of gas molecules on the particle surface is computed by an indirect approach based on the coordinate transformation. Neighboring-cell contact detection scheme is applied to check for contacts between all possible particle pairs. The simulation results show that the acceleration of dust particle is mostly determined by the parameters of plume field. In the computational regions with larger gas density and velocity the particles can be accelerated to larger velocity and convected to higher temperature.

► To simulate the interaction of rocket plume and dust particles during a lunar landing process.
► Collision mechanisms include gas–gas, gas–dust, dust–dust collisions.
► Acceleration of dust particle is mostly determined by the parameters of plume field.