Author Description

Aeroenergetics is a simple book on Computational Numerical Simulation of Electric Propulsion for Interplanetary Missions. On 5th November 2013, India launched Mangalyaan to Mars orbit. Indian space Research Organization prepared Mangalyaan containing an in-built small liquid engine. Mangalyaan will take long time to reach the Mars orbit. It is estimated to reach Mars after 10 months travel. This bi-propellant rocket system has good thrust, whereas specific impulse and velocity are low. In future, a rocket with good high specific impulse and high velocity of rocket system may be sent to reduce the trip time to Mars. By analyzing all available propulsion systems, it was found that electric propulsion rocket system is expected to become popular with the development of ion-ion pair techniques. It needs low propellant and has a design thrust range around 2N with high efficiency. An ion - ion pair of electric propulsion rocket system is proposed and mathematically analysed with the help of computational numerical simulation in this book. The negative ions are produced from electro negative gas, chlorine. Ions are produced by adding gas to electron emitted from an electron gun ionization chamber. The formation of large stable negative ion is achievable in chlorine gas due to its high electron affinity. When a neutral chlorine atom in the gaseous form picks up an electron and forms a chloride ion, it releases an energy of 3.6eV. The negative ion density becomes several orders of magnitude larger than that of the electrons, hence forming ion-ion plasma at the periphery of the discharge. The distance between ion-ion is important for evaluating the rocket thrust. It is also calculated from the exhaust velocity of the propellant. Ion-ion plasma is accelerated to a high velocity in the thrust vector direction via grids and the exhaust of ions through nozzle. The simulation of the ion propulsion system has been carried out by MATLAB computer software programme. By comparing the s