Adjoint-based topology optimization to reduce the energy consumption of a Hall effect thruster

Abstract

Purpose

The presented study aims to minimize the energy consumed by a Hall effect thruster (HET) under a constraint which makes it possible to generate a specified magnetic field in a target region of the thruster.

Design/methodology/approach

Herein topology optimization (TO) is used to reduce the energy consumption of an HET while keeping its performance unchanged. The design variables are the current densities in the coils and the distribution of materials in the polar pieces of the thruster. Intermediate values of material distribution are penalized using the solid isotropic material with penalization method to favor binary solutions. By means of the adjoint method, this paper provides the derivatives of the objective and constraint functions with respect to material distribution and current density variables.

Findings

The TO-based design methodology is developed and validated on a design example involving 2,051 variables. The approach shows its interest and its effectiveness of on a large scale two-criteria problem.

Research limitations/implications

In this paper, TO is presented as a tool that has allowed to explore new and innovative designs. However, although the design presented is original, its fabrication is not feasible. Despite this, the designs found give a good idea of the starting points for shape and parametric optimization tools.

Practical implications

Through the HET design problem, TO shows the ability to explore more original design possibilities of a complex magnetostatic design problem and to discover designs that make a HET more efficient with respect to several criteria at the same time.

Originality/value

A new way to reduce the energy consumption of a HET is presented. To achieve this, an adjoint-based TO method is developed and then implemented in a simple way. This approach shows that, for efficiency purposes, TO is a key tool for extending the state of the art of HET designs.

Citation

Youness, R. and Messine, F. (2021), "Adjoint-based topology optimization to reduce the energy consumption of a Hall effect thruster", COMPEL - The international journal for computation and mathematics in electrical and electronic engineering, Vol. 40 No. 2, pp. 197-209. https://doi.org/10.1108/COMPEL-01-2020-0038