Home▸Aerospace Engineering & Orbital Mechanics▸Colloid Thruster — Taylor Cone Meniscus & Space-Charge Beam Spreading (2D)

Colloid Thruster — Taylor Cone Meniscus & Space-Charge Beam Spreading (2D)

Interactive 2D side-view simulation of an electrospray (colloid) thruster: watch the propellant meniscus deform into a Taylor cone once the sharp-tip electric field crosses onset, then track how the emitted charged beam spreads under its own mutual Coulomb repulsion — a real N-body space-charge effect — as voltage, ionization fraction, flow rate and emitter-array size change.

Aerospace Engineering & Orbital Mechanics2DAdvanced60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

This 2D companion to the 3D colloid-thruster simulator strips the device down to a single-emitter side view so two pieces of physics the 3D scene glosses over can be shown directly. First, the emitter tip's local electric field is computed with the standard sharp-tip (hyperboloid) enhancement formula rather than a flat parallel-plate approximation, so the propellant meniscus visibly relaxes into a hemispherical cap below the Taylor-cone onset field and deforms toward the classical 49.3° Taylor angle once onset is crossed. Second, every emitted droplet or ion in the beam is integrated as a real charged particle that feels a genuine Coulomb repulsion from every other particle currently in flight — so the beam's spreading (its divergence angle) emerges from that N-body electrostatics calculation instead of being drawn from a fixed random cone. Adjust extractor voltage, ionization fraction, mass flow rate and emitter-array size to see how each one trades exhaust velocity and thrust against how tightly the plume stays focused.

⚙ Under the hood

A 2D side-view electrospray thruster: the propellant meniscus deforms toward the classical 49.3° Taylor cone once the sharp-tip field crosses onset, then every emitted droplet/ion is integrated as a real charged macro-particle under mutual Coulomb repulsion, so the beam's divergence angle emerges from genuine N-body space-charge physics instead of a fixed spray cone.

electric propulsioncolloid thrusterelectrosprayTaylor conespace chargespacecraft

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install