Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Laser Induced Ablation for Micro Propulsion

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-µ�N 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.