Alejandro Alvarez Laguna, LPP researcher, is awarded an ERC Starting grant.

Alejandro Alvarez Laguna, CNRS researcher at LPP is awarded an ERC Starting grant. The Starting Grants are awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) for a maximum budget of 1.5 million Euros and a duration of 5 years to early-career researchers that want to develop an exploratory and ambitious project at the boundaries of knowledge.

 

His project, entitled HiMomPlas (High-order moment models and multi-scale numerical methods for plasmas applied to electric propulsion ), focuses on the improvement of the mathematical and numerical models for electric propulsion. We are in the midst of a technological revolution characterized by the large demand for small satellites that operate in constellations. HiMomPlas tackles two critical limitations of current satellite electric propulsion system: 1) They operate with xenon, a very expensive gas, and 2) there are no predictive tools to help the design, which results in very expensive trial-and-error development. These limitations are due to the lack of models that capture the complex plasma physics. We intend to answer to these limitations by addressing fundamental longstanding questions in plasmas using modern applied mathematics and statistical physics techniques, never used before in electric propulsion. HiMomPlas will propose novel high-order moment closures that efficiently extend the fluid equations to non-equilibrium regimes. This moment models will be used to study wave turbulence to describe the effect of the small scales into the large scales. Finally, the high-order moment will allow to study alternative cheaper propellants with models to capture the complex interaction with the wall materials. The full model will be implemented with multi-scale numerical methods and validated with available experimental data. HiMomPlas intends to contribute to a sustainable space industry development by helping to design more efficient, cheaper electric propulsion thrusters with enhanced lifetimes.

 

Alejandro Alvarez Laguna is CNRS researcher since 2020 working at  Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas of École Polytechnique. He obtained a PhD from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium after a research master in fluid dynamics from von Karman Institute in Belgium and an Aerospace Engineering degree from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain). After his PhD he joined the LPP as postdoc in collaboration with the Applied Mathematics Center of École Polytechnique. He has been an invited researcher in the Aeronautics and Astronautics department of Stanford University as well as in the Supercomputing Division of NASA Ames Research Center, both in the USA. 

 

Flyer of the HiMomPlas project: clic here