Simulation study of ablation characteristics of a capillary discharge based pulsed plasma thruster

Capillary discharge based pulsed plasma thruster is expected to support formation flight and precise control of space unfolding structural support， showing important application values. In this paper， a kinetic ablation model and a magnetohydrodynamic model are developed to analyse the changes of key parameters such as temperature in the cavity and reveal the energy dissipation mechanism of the ablation process and thrust generation process. The simulation results show that the discharge current and wall temperature are the key factors affecting the ablation process and plasma parameters， and the ablation rate takes 700 K as the turning point and changes significantly in different wall temperature intervals. The ablation process has three stages： negative feedback inhibition， transition and positive feedback acceleration. The peak plasma velocity at the cathode nozzle side is affected by the combined effect of pressure and plasma temperature in the chamber and is in phase with the discharge current waveform.