2026-04-14T09:10:29Zhttps://recercat.cat/oai/request

oai:recercat.cat:2117/3590552026-01-30T08:52:27Zcom_2072_1033col_2072_452950

Intake design for an Atmosphere-Breathing Electric Propulsion system (ABEP) Romano, Francesco Espinosa-Orozco, J. Pfeiffer, M. Herdrichd, Georg H. Crisp, Nicholas H. Holmes, Brandon E.A. Edmonson, Steve Haigh, Sarah J. Livadiotti, Sabrina Macario Rojas, Alejandro García-Almiñana, Daniel Rodríguez Donaire, Silvia Sureda Anfres, Miquel Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Departament d'Enginyeria de Projectes i de la Construcció Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Departament de Física Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. TUAREG - Turbulence and Aerodynamics in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Research Group Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. L'AIRE - Laboratori Aeronàutic i Industrial de Recerca i Estudis Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Aeronàutica i espai Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Física Artificial satellites Space flight Propulsion systems ABEP Intake VLEO DSMC PICLas Birdcage Helicon Satèl·lits artificials Vol espacial Sistemes de propulsió Challenging space missions include those at very low altitudes, where the atmosphere is source of aerodynamic drag on the spacecraft. To extend the lifetime of such missions, an efficient propulsion system is required. One solution is Atmosphere-Breathing Electric Propulsion (ABEP) that collects atmospheric particles to be used as propellant for an electric thruster. The system would minimize the requirement of limited propellant availability and can also be applied to any planetary body with atmosphere, enabling new missions at low altitude ranges for longer times. IRS is developing, within the H2020 DISCOVERER project, an intake and a thruster for an ABEP system. The article describes the design and simulation of the intake, optimized to feed the radio frequency (RF) Helicon-based plasma thruster developed at IRS. The article deals in particular with the design of intakes based on diffuse and specular reflecting materials, which are analysed by the PICLas DSMC-PIC tool. Orbital altitudes and the respective species based on the NRLMSISE-00 model (O, , , He, Ar, H, N) are investigated for several concepts based on fully diffuse and specular scattering, including hybrid designs. The major focus has been on the intake efficiency defined as , with the incoming particle flux, and the one collected by the intake. Finally, two concepts are selected and presented providing the best expected performance for the operation with the selected thruster. The first one is based on fully diffuse accommodation yielding to and the second one based on fully specular accommodation yielding to . Finally, also the influence of misalignment with the flow is analysed, highlighting a strong dependence of in the diffuse-based intake while, for the specular-based intake, this is much lower finally leading to a more resilient design while also relaxing requirements of pointing accuracy for the spacecraft. Article signat per 32 autors/es: F. Romano, J. Espinosa-Orozco, M. Pfeiffer, G. Herdrich, N.H. Crisp, P.C.E. Roberts, B.E.A. Holmes, S. Edmondson, S. Haigh, S. Livadiotti, A. Macario-Rojas, V.T.A. Oiko, L.A. Sinpetru, K. Smith, J. Becedas, V. Sulliotti-Linner, M. Bisgaard, S. Christensen, V. Hanessian, T. Kauffman Jensen, J. Nielsen, Y.-A. Chan, S. Fasoulas, C. Traub, D. García-Almiñana, S. Rodríguez-Donaire, M. Sureda, D. Kataria, B. Belkouchi, A. Conte, S. Seminari, R. Villain. Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::9 - Indústria, Innovació i Infraestructura Postprint (published version) 2021-10 Article Romano, F. [et al.]. Intake design for an Atmosphere-Breathing Electric Propulsion system (ABEP). "Acta astronautica", Octubre 2021, vol. 187, p. 225-235. 0094-5765 https://discoverer.space/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/1-s2.0-S0094576521003301-main.pdf https://hdl.handle.net/2117/359055 10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.06.033 eng https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576521003301 info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/737183/EU/DISCOVERER – DISruptive teChnOlogies for VERy low Earth oRbit platforms/DISCOVERER http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Open Access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International 11 p. application/pdf