Abstract
Lifetime is a main factor restraining the application of low-power Hall thruster. Magnetic shielding configuration is regarded as a promising method to prolong the lifespan of Hall thruster. Aiming to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of magnetic shielding configuration applying on low-power Hall thruster, a 60-mm diameter Hall thruster in partial magnetic shielding configuration was designated. Both the numerical and experimental methods were used to investigate the discharge characteristics of the Hall thruster and help understand the mechanism behind. The maximum anode efficiency was achieved as high as 29.7% with 1.7 mg·s–1 anode mass flow and 320 V discharge voltage. To evaluate the effectiveness of the magnetic shielding used for low-power Hall thruster, a 2000 h lifetime test has been carried out and the results indicate that the erosion rate has been decreased below 0.2 μm·h–1.
Highlights
For the past few years, the new aerospace applications represented by microsatellite network promote the development of the low-power Hall thruster (< 500 W and < 7 cm diameter) (Grimaud and Mazouffre 2017)
Inner Wall in last 200h Outer Wall in last 200h Inner Wall in last average Outer Wall in last average. Both numerical and experimental methods were performed to investigate the effects of the magnetic shielding configuration on the discharge characteristics of the 60-mm diameter Hall thruster
A 2000 h lifetime test was carried out to validate the effectiveness of the magnetic shielding configuration adopted in low-power Hall thruster
Summary
For the past few years, the new aerospace applications represented by microsatellite network promote the development of the low-power Hall thruster (< 500 W and < 7 cm diameter) (Grimaud and Mazouffre 2017). To demonstrate the application and effectiveness of the magnetic shielding configuration on low-power Hall thruster, a 60-mm diameter Hall thruster called LHT-60M (Fig. 2) was designed based on its unshielded counterpart. Giving that application of magnetic shielding configuration on low-power Hall thruster will decrease the efficiency, found in BHT-100 and ISCT200-Ms (Grimaud and Mazouffre 2018; Szabo et al 2017), and the strict requirement for magnetic components, a partial magnetic shielding configuration was achieved, in which part of the magnetic lines were allowed to intersect the walls of acceleration region. For the particles expect electrons, the flux on the boundary could be expressed as Eq 19, where vth denotes the thermal velocity of the ions and listed in Table 1 (Christou and Jugroot 2015):. Pd is the power consumed when the thruster is operation, mXe represents the mass flow rate of the propellant and g is gravitational acceleration constant, which is 9.8 m·s–2
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