Hall thruster wall erosion simulation

[yuanjiang-lance]

Hi all,

I'm quite interested in whether WarpX could simulate wall erosion in Hall thrusters or other electromagnetic thrusters. It is much related to the plasma dynamics in thruster discharge chamber.

[RemiLehe]

Thanks for the question.
I am not very familiar with this physics. Could explain what is the physics that governs wall erosion? e.g. what is the wall typically made of, and what causes it to erode (e.g. is it because fast electron and/or ions are impacting the wall and cause sputtering of the wall material? In that case WarpX would not be able to simulate this physics, in its current state)

[aveksler1]

Off the top of my head, I know of TRI3DYN, a code that simulates dynamic wall erosion from ion irradiation. I'm not sure if the irradiation models there can represent the type of plasma you are interested in.

https://www.hzdr.de/db/Cms?pOid=64858&pNid=2689&pLang=en