Computational acceleration of orbital neutral sensor ionizer simulation through phenomena separation

Simulation of orbital phenomena is often difficult because of the non-continuum nature of the flow, which forces the use of particle methods, and the disparate time scales, which make long run times necessary. In this work, the computational work load has been reduced by taking advantage of the low...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of computational physics 2016-07, Vol.316, p.1-9
Main Author: Font, Gabriel I.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acceleration
Computation
Computer simulation
DSMC
Ionosphere
Loads (forces)
Low earth orbits
Orbital sensor
Orbitals
PIC
Run time (computers)
Sensors
Time
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Simulation of orbital phenomena is often difficult because of the non-continuum nature of the flow, which forces the use of particle methods, and the disparate time scales, which make long run times necessary. In this work, the computational work load has been reduced by taking advantage of the low number of collisions between different species. This allows each population of particles to be brought into convergence separately using a time step size optimized for its particular motion. The converged populations are then brought together to simulate low probability phenomena, such as ionization or excitation, on much longer time scales. The result of this technique has the effect of reducing run times by a factor of 103–104. The technique was applied to the simulation of a low earth orbit neutral species sensor with an ionizing element. Comparison with laboratory experiments of ion impacts generated by electron flux shows very good agreement.
ISSN:0021-9991
1090-2716
DOI:10.1016/j.jcp.2016.02.060