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Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Laser Induced Ablation for Micro Propulsion

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High Performance Computing in Science and Engineering ‘14

Abstract

A new concept of micro propulsion based upon laser ablation MICROLAS was introduced by the Institute of Technical Physics (ITP) of DLR Stuttgart. Pulsed lasers are used for material removal of a target. The amount of removed material should be variable due to the tunability of input laser energy and repetition rate, resulting in well defined impulse bits and low small thrusts down to the sub-μN scale. We present a modeling approach of laser ablation in order to calculate important figures of merit in aerospace engineering. The program applied is IMD (http://imd.itap.uni-stuttgart.de), an open source molecular dynamics package of the Institute of Functional Materials Quantum Technologies (FMQ). Results are compared with a hydrodynamic code, VLL (http://vll.ihed.ras.ru), as well as with experimental investigations.

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Acknowledgements

Financial funding from the German Science Foundation DFG for the Collaborative Research Center SFB 716 “Dynamic simulations of systems with large particle numbers” in subproject B.5 “Laser ablation: from simple metals to complex materials” is greatly acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Funktionelle Materialien und Quantentechnologien, Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Daniel J. Förster & Johannes Roth

  2. Institut für technische Physik, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrttechnik, Stuttgart, Germany

    Stefan Scharring & Hans-Albert Eckel

Authors
  1. Daniel J. Förster
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  2. Stefan Scharring
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  3. Johannes Roth
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  4. Hans-Albert Eckel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johannes Roth .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Zentrum für Informationsdienste und Hochleistungsrechnen (ZIH), Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Wolfgang E. Nagel

  2. Abteilung für Angewandte Mathematik, Universität Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Dietmar H. Kröner

  3. HöchstleistungsrechenzentrumStuttgart (HLRS), Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Michael M. Resch

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Förster, D.J., Scharring, S., Roth, J., Eckel, HA. (2015). Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Laser Induced Ablation for Micro Propulsion. In: Nagel, W., Kröner, D., Resch, M. (eds) High Performance Computing in Science and Engineering ‘14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10810-0_10

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