Thrust Performance in Hall Thruster with Pulsating Operation

Abstract

An innovative engine, designated "Volterra," has been developed and the thrust performance, thrust, beam divergence angle, and ion energy distribution function were investigated using a 1 kW class magnetic-layer-type Hall thruster developed at Kyushu University. The thrust of this engine is superior to that of the thruster with 150 V constant voltage operation, but the ion energy distribution function is wider. Plume divergence is almost the same as for the thruster with 150 V constant voltage operation.

Performance of Oscillating Plasma Thrusters

“…Therefore, for the rest of the paper, a sine wave oscillation is considered for two reasons. The first is that there is a single solution to the time-dependent thrust and power, and the second is this solution is directly relevant to the situation explored in experiments with externally-driven breathing oscillations in Hall thrusters [4,7,10].…”

“…8), it is also necessary to account for effects of oscillations on the input power. For example, in Hall thruster experiments with externally driven oscillations of the discharge voltage, a phase difference between the discharge current and discharge voltage was often observed [7]. Thus the expression for the input power of oscillating thruster has to be different from the expression used for conventional DC power Hall and Ion thrusters.…”

“…These discharge oscillations result in oscillations of the plasma flow from the thruster [1][2][3]. Apart from these naturally occurring oscillations, recent studies have explored externally driven oscillations of the discharge to control the thruster operation [4][5][6][7]. In particular, work by Romadanov et al modulated the DC discharge voltage with a sinusoidal signal.…”

Thrust Performance in a 5 kW Class Anode Layer Type Hall Thruster

“…Details on the ion collector and RPA are presented in Ref. 14). The ion collector and RPA were located at 750 mm downstream of the thruster exit.…”

“…For longer lifetime, plasma generation should take place near the chanel exit or external channel, but this will lead to reduced efficiency of propellant utilization. We plan to measure the erosion rate of RAIJIN94 using cavity ringdown spectroscopy, [14][15] which will reveal the effects of plasma generation. Thrust performance will be improved through optimization of the magnetic field, to achieve the designated target thrust, specific impulse and thrust efficiency of 360 mN, 1700 sec and 0.52, respectively, at anode mass flow rate of 20 mg/s, cathode mass flow rate of 1.0 mg/s, and power consumption of 6 kW.…”