SPIS 6.1.0: Bug in hybrid simulation in the Solar Wind with photemission

SPIS
1

Hi everyone,

We noticed with SebHess that there is a bug in SPIS 6.1.0. when doing hybrid simulation of a conductive spacecraft immersed in the solar wind with photoemission.

It turns out that the positive charge is underestimated! 0.5V instead of 5V (this order of magnitude).

Waiting for a patch :slight_smile:

2

To illustrate what I said, here are the time vs potential, time vs total net current and a probe line showing the evolution of the potential along the Y axis, for 3 versions of SPIS:

First with the SPIS 6.0.4 version
SPIS6.0.4time vs sc Potential
SPIS6.0.4Total net current
SPIS6.0.4 probe line Y axis

With the released SPIS 6.1.0:

SPIS6.1.0 time vs potential
SPIS6.1.0 time vs total net current
SPIS6.1.0 Y probe line potential

With the git version:

SPIS6.1.0 Corrected SebHess time vs potential and total net current
SPIS6.1.0 Corrected SebHess Y probe line potential

Released version of SPIS 6.1.0 in FULL PIC
SPIS6.1.0 FULL PIC time vs net current
SPIS6.1.0 FULL PIC time vs potenial
SPIS6.1.0 FULL PIC

3

Note that for the full PIC, the total net current is still decreasing while the simulation does not have finished to converge.

4

Tested with dev version which gives the correct results. The bug (if any) will be corrected in the next version.
Sébastien