Abstract: The sputtering effect of the Hall thruster plume has a large influence on operating performance and power support stability of the solar panel. In order to study the sputtering mechanism of plume bombarding on the solar panel under different installation conditions of Hall thruster, a hybrid model based on Particle in Cell/Directional Simulation of Montecarlo Collisions was employed ,and the ion diffusion model was corrected to solve the plume field. Meanwhile, the Yamamura sputtering model was used to calculate the sputtering yield on the solar panel caused by the plume bombardment. A diagnose test of plume in the vacuum chamber was conducted to verify and correct the feasibility and accuracy of the calculation model, and the diffusion coefficient was corrected to make calculation agree with the test. According to the comparison between the test and calculation results, the error of the calculation model is about 87% with kd=126×10-36N·m4. Based on those, the corrected model was used to calculate the sputtering yield on the solar panel with different onorbit conditions of thruster installation angle and thrusterpanel distance. The calculation results provide the changing rules of the surface sputtering mass distribution on the panel under different conditions, and the light transmittance influenced by sputtering was also predicted. This paper can provide a reference of Hall thruster installation strategy on the satellite.

Key words: Hall thruster, plume, sputtering, solar panel, numerical simulation