Newly designed ignition circuit to improve the ignition reliability of Hall thruster

Abstract

This study proposes a newly designed ignition circuit that does not change the ignition starting parameters of a Hall thruster, reduces the critical ignition voltage, and improves ignition reliability. The complexity and weight of the Hall thruster power supply system are reduced by multiplexing the ignition and discharge power supplies. Under the condition that the design parameters are satisfied, that is, R3+REC2 is much larger than RCC1, the residual energy in the circuit after the cathode breakdown can be fed into the thruster discharge channel to improve the ignition energy supply. The experimental results show that when the anode voltage is 98 V, only nine of the 100 ignition tests are successful using the traditional ignition circuit, whereas the number of successes using the newly designed ignition circuit is as high as 99, which provides a simple solution method for improving the ignition reliability.