Comparison between multifluid and Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations of instabilities and boundary layers in low-temperature low pressure magnetized plasmas for electric propulsion applications.*

The objective of this work is to assess some of the potential advantages and limitations of finite volume method applied to multifluid equations as compared to Particle-In-Cells (PIC) methods. Hydrogen and Argon plasma discharges in 2D are simulated using a two-fluid isothermal Euler-Poisson equations finite volume method. The structure of sheaths in non-magnetized cases, and the appearance of instabilities in magnetized cases are compared with PIC simulations. We also present preliminary result obtained via a second order discretization finite volume methods using Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) method. Finally, we present ongoing work on adapting a recently developed asymptotic preserving method to the 2D framework presented here. We aim at showing that, and evaluating to what extent, fluid models associated with tailored numerical methods have a lot of potential for plasmas of interest in electric propulsion applications.