A new vaporizing liquid microthruster with planar induction heating

Abstract

This paper presents a new vaporizing liquid microthruster (VLM), which is driven by the vaporizing liquid with planar induction heating. The developed microthruster mainly consists of an inlet, a microchannel, a vaporizing chamber, a micronozzle, a microheating plate and an external excitation coil. Experiments of the apparent power required to achieve a complete vaporization of the propellant with different flow rates were carried out. Thrust forces of the new VLM were characterized with water as the propellant. A maximum thrust of 970 μN was obtained with 5.30 mg/s propellant consumption and an apparent power of 9.31 VA.