Rarefied Intake Aerodynamics for Atmosphere-Breathing Electric Propulsion at Titan

Context: Third-year individual project, University of Southampton (work in progress)
Tools: SPARTA (DSMC), Python, ParaView, HPC

Animated DSMC particle simulation of the same parabolic intake at Earth and at Titan

The same intake simulated in Earth's upper atmosphere and in Titan's. Each dot is a simulated molecule, coloured by its axial velocity: red ones are heading into the intake, blue ones have been turned back out.

Summary

Atmosphere-breathing electric propulsion (ABEP) uses the thin atmosphere around a spacecraft as propellant. An intake collects molecules and feeds them to an electric thruster, so a spacecraft in a low orbit could offset its drag without carrying propellant. Most work so far has looked at very low Earth orbit. This project looks at whether the idea could work at Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, which has a deep nitrogen atmosphere and much lower orbital speeds than Earth.

At these altitudes the gas is too thin for conventional CFD, so I simulate the intake flow with the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. I have validated my set-up against published Earth results and am now running a larger simulation campaign on an HPC cluster to assess intake designs for Titan.

The full method and results will be in the final report.

3D cutaway of an intake with simulated molecules, rendered in ParaView

A 3D cutaway of the Earth case, rendered in ParaView.