Temporal 3D refined simulation of SF6 release in the ionosphere

Abstract A number of significant studies have been dedicated to SF 6 releases. However, given the complicated nature, the simulations provided at the design phases are still not consistent with those diagnosed in experiments. It is mainly because the actual conditions of experiments have not been fully introduced in the state-of-art models. A temporal 3D refined simulation model of SF 6 release by a rocket payload is proposed in this paper. It first considers the release status (rocket attitude, velocity, etc.), release process (duration, injection velocity, the flux of the chemical release, etc.) and ambient neutral wind. This model is better than existing ones; the latter can only deal with release from a point source. The time-dependent drift of the released cloud, driven by the velocities of the rocket inertia and neutral wind, are calculated accurately. The non-uniform spherical structure of the electron density hole driven by the lasting release along the trajectory and the injection velocity are also described. The release flow field is calculated by using a new microcell method. The temporal 3D refined model proposed could be useful for improving the diagnosis and also helpful for the theory on chemical releases.