To investigate radiation loss inside the low power argon Arcjet Thruster

numerical simulations and analyses were carried out by using radiation and no radiation models contrastively.Non-oscillatory and Non-free-parameters Dissipative finite difference scheme with second order accuracy was employed to solve Navier-Stokes equations coupled with electromagnetic and radiant source terms

and implicit residual-smoothing technique was adopted to accelerate numerical converging.Finite control volume integral approach was developed to discrete elliptic partial differential equation of electromagnetic field

and successive over relaxation method was introduced to expedite numerical converging.By virtue of numerical simulations

flow distributions within the thruster

thrust

specific impulse and thrust efficiency of the thruster in radiation and no radiation models are presented.Results of the study show that 0.137% lower specific impulse and 1.03% lower thrust efficiency are obtained in radiation model

compared with no radiation model

and radiation loss has little effect on performance of low power Arcjet Thrusters.