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Impact of secondary and backscattered electron currents on absolute charging of structures used in spacecraft
Author(s) -
Pandya Ashish,
Mehta Prarthan,
Kothari Nikhil
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of numerical modelling: electronic networks, devices and fields
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.249
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1099-1204
pISSN - 0894-3370
DOI - 10.1002/jnm.2631
Subject(s) - isotropy , computational physics , electron , spacecraft , spacecraft charging , pyramid (geometry) , plasma , differential (mechanical device) , physics , capacitance , atomic physics , materials science , optics , quantum mechanics , electrode , astronomy , thermodynamics
This article analyzes absolute charging of a metallic pyramid in single Maxwellian normal and worst cases of plasma environment. Capacitance of a pyramid for estimation of body potential is computed by the Method of Moments. Body potential temporal variation is obtained by numerically integrating the differential equation using the fourth order Runge‐Kutta method. Owing to a well‐known fact that diverse secondary and backscattered electron yields for different materials is the prime reason for most destructive differential charging, this work includes impact of normal and isotropic incidence of particles for a metal surface of aluminum. The decisive inferences related to these properties together with temporal variation of body potential are compared. Our computational results reveal a significant difference in the estimation of absolute charging in comparison with the same reported earlier.