Characterizing dusty hypervelocity impact plasma plume dynamics and effects
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Impacts on spacecraft by dust and orbital debris are a common occurrence. These impacts are termed hypervelocity impacts and have enough energy to vaporize and ionize some of the material in the area of the impact, creating a plasma. Complicating the dynamics is the possibility of non-vaporized ejecta which can interact with the plasma altering the plume dynamics or forming a dusty plasma. An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) can result from these impacts and subsequent expansion of plasma that is potentially dangerous to spacecraft electronics. The focus of this dissertation is understanding and putting in context the results from an experimental campaign at the NASA Ames Vertical Gun Range light gas gun. Non-vaporized charged ejecta is successfully measured with a new set of plasma sensors designed specifically for this experiment. Dust is found to transport a significant amount of plasma through dust-plasma interactions and was found to be unaffected by the applied external electric fields. The neutral background affected the plume dynamics during the experiments. Plumes resulting from impacts on metal targets are separated into two expansion regions. A Rayleigh-Taylor instability is found to form on the inner expansion region at the contact surface between the plume and background gas as the plume is slowed by around 10 km/s. Two different types of FLASH hydrodynamic modeling is used for the first time to expand on analytic modeling and capture how the plume properties evolve under the influence of the gas dynamics. These simulations show that significant plume heating occurs at the contact surface where there is an increased plume density due to the plume bunching as it slows. The heating may contribute to additional ionization leading to the dust moving through a more dense plasma than would be present during an impact in a vacuum. A new EMP mechanism, rapid target charging, is observed to occur from the interaction between the outer expansion and the charged target. Additional evidence for this EMP is newly found in past experiment campaigns. This type of EMP would be explicitly dangerous to spacecraft as it involves the plume coupling to the spacecraft surface or even internal wiring.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Estacio, Benjamin Troy |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Close, Sigrid, 1971- |
| Thesis advisor | Close, Sigrid, 1971- |
| Thesis advisor | Hara, Ken |
| Thesis advisor | Senesky, Debbie |
| Degree committee member | Hara, Ken |
| Degree committee member | Senesky, Debbie |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Benjamin Estacio. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/ct926sn7996 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Benjamin Troy Estacio
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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