Three-dimensional simulation of beam ions in ion thruster optics system

A three-dimensional numerical simulation was carried out with the particle-in-cell method.The electric field,the paths of the ions,the spatial and the phase spatial distribution of the ions in the calculation domain were obtained from the simulation.It shows that the ion transparency of the screen grid and the acceleration grid is 69.3% and 100%,respectively,which is respectively bigger than the physical transparencies of 67.1% and 31.1% of the screen grid and the acceleration grid.The simulation parameters selected in the calculation are reasonable.The simulation results can provide a reference for the preliminary design of the ion thruster optics.