Abstract
Hall thrusters are spacecraft propulsion devices that generate and accelerate plasma to provide thrust. Despite the use of constant voltage supplies to power these devices, complex finite-rate and convective effects lead to significant discharge current oscillations in most operating modes. In this paper, we demonstrate the interaction of finite impedance in the electrical harness with fundamental oscillatory behavior of the thruster by implementing a self-consistent harness model in a physics-based Hall thruster code. Results confirm previous work that voltage ripple is directly proportional to the total impedance for the majority of reasonable harnesses lengths. However, for extremely long harness lengths, results indicate that nonlinear coupling eventually dominates to reduce the voltage ripple with increased impedance.
Highlights
Hall effect thrusters are spacecraft propulsion devices that use electricity to ionize and accelerate neutral propellant gas
This paper demonstrated a self-consistent electrical harness model coupled to a physics-based Hall thruster code
It was used to confirm a prior experiment-based study that found that discharge voltage ripple increases with harness length
Summary
Hall effect thrusters are spacecraft propulsion devices that use electricity to ionize and accelerate neutral propellant gas. Magnets placed along the thruster circumference generate a predominantly radial magnetic field to retard the axial motion of electrons. The ions created in this region of increased electron density are accelerated out of the device by the potential gradient established by the two electrodes, generating thrust. One interesting aspect of a Hall thruster operation is that despite being powered by a direct current (DC) power supply, the discharge current exhibits highly oscillatory behavior. While the dominant low-frequency term, the so-called “breathing mode,” arises from the prey-predator nature of the ionization/convection process, many other contributions exist in the complex topology defined by the imposed electric and magnetic fields. A thorough review of plasma oscillations present in a Hall thruster can be found in Choueiri.
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