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Kinetic Particle Simulations Of Plasma Charging At Lunar Craters Under Severe Conditions, David Lund, Xiaoming He, Daoru Frank Han
Kinetic Particle Simulations Of Plasma Charging At Lunar Craters Under Severe Conditions, David Lund, Xiaoming He, Daoru Frank Han
Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Research & Creative Works
This paper presents fully kinetic particle simulations of plasma charging at lunar craters with the presence of lunar lander modules using the recently developed Parallel Immersed-Finite-Element Particle-in-Cell (PIFE-PIC) code. The computation model explicitly includes the lunar regolith layer on top of the lunar bedrock, taking into account the regolith layer thickness and permittivity as well as the lunar lander module in the simulation domain, resolving a nontrivial surface terrain or lunar lander configuration. Simulations were carried out to study the lunar surface and lunar lander module charging near craters at the lunar terminator region under mean and severe plasma environments. …