Heat Flux Reduction of Satellites and Spacecraft

Abstract The reduction of high electron and ion heat fluxes is one of the critical issues for shielding satellite and spacecraft. One of the ideas for shielding high particle and heat fluxes is to apply an external magnetic field generated by injecting current filaments. In this work, we model a flow of plasma, which includes electrons and ions in a small region, by using two spatial dimensions and three coordinates for velocities (2D3V) Particle-In-Cell (PIC) code, to study the effects of the injected current filaments on particle and heat fluxes to the wall. The plasma enters the simulation domain from the source region at the left boundary and is fully absorbed at the conductor wall at the right boundary. Current filaments are injected to change the magnetic field structure of the system. We compare particle density, particle flux and heat flux with and without injecting the current filaments into the domain in two dimensions. Based on the simulation results, we found that injecting current filaments can reduce the peak fluxes to the wall and transfer some of those fluxes along the wall. Therefore, injecting the current filaments is a good candidate for shielding high energy ion and electron fluxes to the satellites or spacecraft.