Parametric Investigations of Non-Conventional Hall Thruster

Abstract

Hall thrusters might better scale to low power with non-conventional geometry. A 9 cm cylindrical, ceramic-channel, Hall thruster with a cusp-type magnetic field distribution has been investigated. It exhibits discharge characteristics similar to conventional coaxial Hall thrusters, but does not expose as much channel surface. Significantly, its operation is not accompanied by large amplitude discharge low frequency oscillations.2