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Application Of Spectral Solution And Neural Network Techniques In Plasma Modeling For Electric Propulsion, Joseph R. Whitman

Theses and Dissertations

A solver for Poisson's equation was developed using the Radix-2 FFT method first invented by Carl Friedrich Gauss. Its performance was characterized using simulated data and identical boundary conditions to those found in a Hall Effect Thruster. The characterization showed errors below machine-zero with noise-free data, and above 20% noise-to-signal strength, the error increased linearly with the noise. This solver can be implemented into AFRL's plasma simulator, the Thermophysics Universal Research Framework (TURF) and used to quickly and accurately compute the electric field based on charge distributions. The validity of a machine learning approach and data-based complex system modeling approach …