The paper presents an engineering simplified mathematical model for estimating integral characteristics of radio-frequency ion thrusters with an additional magnetostatic field. In addition to the integral characteristics calculation, the proposed model allows to obtain the distributions of some plasma local parameters in a gas-discharge chamber of thruster – atoms and charged particles concentrations, and temperature of electrons. In a calculation, axisymmetric geometry of main elements of a thruster structure is considered. Two approaches to taking into account the influence of an additional magnetic field on the distribution of charged particles concentration are implementing. Each of them allows to estimate integral characteristics of radio-frequency ion thrusters with acceptable accuracy. The comparison of the experimental data with simulation results showed that error of thruster’s parameters estimation does not exceed 20-25%, which is sufficient for preliminary designing of new radio-frequency ion thrusters models with an additional source of magnetostatic field.

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This paper considers the application of the triple Langmuir probe method to investigate the local plasma parameters of the radio frequency (RF) discharge that is placed in the applied magnetostatic field. The main criteria applicability for such a method for experimental diagnostics of RF plasma parameters is presented. As an example, this paper presents experimental results that were obtained using the proposed method on local plasma parameters in one of the cross sections of the discharge chamber of the RF ion source with an applied magnetostatic field. The influence of the magnetostatic field on the radial distributions of charged particle density and electron temperature is shown.