Thursday, November 16, 2023 03:30PM

You're invited to attend

 

 

Computational Models of Plasma
Dynamics for Spacecraft Electric Propulsion

 

by

 

Ken Hara

Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics | Stanford University

 

 

Thursday, November 16
3:30 - 4:30 p.m.
Student Success Center, Clary Theatre

 

About the Seminar: 
Ionized gases (plasmas) play an important role in various aerospace engineering applications, including spacecraft electric propulsion, flow control, hypersonic flow, space weather, and material processing. The ultimate goal for computational plasma models is to predict dynamic behavior of complex systems, e.g., transport, reactions, energy heating and loss mechanisms, plasma-material interaction, etc. In this talk, I will present an overview of the theoretical and computational models for weakly ionized gases, with a particular focus on partially magnetized plasmas that are used in cross-field discharges such as the Hall effect thrusters. First, I will introduce various kinetic models, such as particle-in-cell (PIC), Monte Carlo collision (MCC), direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC), and direct kinetic (DK) methods, which can capture kinetic instabilities and resulting plasma waves that contribute to anomalous plasma transport. Next, I will discuss the development of the full fluid moment (FFM) model, which is a new type of model for low-temperature plasmas that capture electron inertia effects. Finally, I will present a data assimilation technique using extended Kalman filters for plasma dynamics, which allows one to infer hidden states and parameters that are difficult to be measured.

 

About the Speaker
Ken Hara is an Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. He received a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering and a Graduate Certificate in Plasma Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, and B.S. and M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Tokyo. Prior to joining Stanford University, he was a Visiting Research Physicist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory as a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellow and a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University. His research interests include electric propulsion, low temperature plasmas, plasma physics (plasma-wall interactions, plasma-wave interactions), data-driven modeling, rarefied gas flows, and computational fluid and plasma dynamics. He is a recipient of the Air Force Young Investigator Program Award, the Department of Energy Early Career Award, and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award.