Design of the retarding potential analyzer to be used with BURFIT-80 Ion thruster and validation using PIC-DSMC code

For better integration of plasma thrusters into spacecraft and satellites, potential damaging effects of impinging high energy ions on the spacecraft surfaces should be taken into consideration. For analyzing the plume plasma in this regard, retarding potential analyzers (RPA) are used in electric propulsion as one of the most fundamental and widely used diagnostics tools. RPA determines the ion energy distribution of plume plasma which is in the downstream of a thruster. This paper reports on a successful design process of an RPA to be used with BURFIT-80 ion thruster. An in-house developed hybrid Particle-In-Cell Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (PIC-DSMC) code, which is previously applied for ion thruster grid region is implemented to simulate the flow in the RPA. Results are used to validate the effective operation of the RPA. Potential distributions in the RPA are investigated and the calculated currents collected by the collector is compared with an existing experimental study.