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Clusters of orbital thrusters are an attractive option to achieve graduated thrust levels and increased redundancy with available hardware, but the heavily under-expanded plumes of chemical attitude control thrusters placed in close proximity will interact, leading to a local amplification of downstream fluxes and of back-flow onto the spacecraft. The interaction of two similar, parallel, axi-symmetric cold-gas model thrusters has recently been studied in the DLR High-Vacuum Plume Test Facility STG under space-like vacuum conditions, employing a Patterson-type impact pressure probe with slot orifice. We reproduce a selection of these experiments numerically, and emphasise that a comparison of numerical results to the measured data is not straight-forward. The signal of the probe used in the experiments must be interpreted according to the degree of rarefaction and local flow Mach number, and both vary dramatically thoughout the flow-field. We present a procedure to reconstruct the probe signal by post-processing the numerically obtained flow-field data and show that agreement to the experimental results is then improved. Features of the investigated cold-gas thruster plume interaction are discussed on the basis of the numerical results.

The free-molecular impact pressure probe, also known as Patterson probe, is known and applied for more than half a century now to deduce the number flux of a single species in highly rarefied inert flow. While the working principle is conceptually simple, interpretation of the gauge readings may not be, but approximate formulas for evaluation exist. In the context of cold-gas plume flow and interaction experiments with the obvious large variations in Mach and Knudsen numbers, it may not be clear initially, whether the signals measured with the Patterson probe are obtained in free-molecular flow environment, and hence, whether the mentioned evaluation techniques may be employed. A series of numerical experiments have been conducted using the Direct Simulation Monte-Carlo method, to study the response of the Patterson probe to prescribed free-stream conditions in the transitional flow regime. From the computational results we infer analytical expressions that describe the probe response in transitional regime at zero angle of attack.

Free-molecular pressure probes are employed to deduce particle flux in highly rarefied flow fields, such as the farfield or the backflow region of a plume expanding into vacuum. Analytical approaches to model the probe behavior are known in the literature for some time now. Numerical methods such as DSMC however allow to conduct investigations into the probe response in regimes inaccessible to analytical approaches. Besides, the numerical results may be compared to the analytical models in order to test their fidelity. We computed the response of a probe with slot orifice to a highly rarefied, parallel flow with varying molecular speed ratio. We confirmed the negligible influence of the speed ratio on probe response for low angles of attack, but observed significant deviations from analytical models as the angle of attack approaches 90°.