Plasma plume evolution of a capillary discharge based pulsed plasma thruster: An optical diagnosis study

Abstract

This paper studied the plasma plume evolution process of a capillary discharge based pulsed plasma thruster. Time-resolved imaging and optical emission spectroscopy were applied to investigate the plume morphology and plasma species characteristics. It showed that ionized particles (mainly C II and F II) were accelerated early in the pulse and neutral particles (mainly C I and F I) later. An optical time-of-flight (OTOF) method was developed using a photodiode array combined with narrow bandpass filters. The equivalent streaming velocity of the plasma plume was evaluated with the OTOF technique. Measurements of individual species showed that both the ionized and the neutral species could be effectively accelerated by gasdynamic forces, and the ionized particles could reach a higher velocity. A Doppler shift measurement of the plasma plume was also performed to compare it with the findings from the OTOF method. The plasma plume streaming velocity of a thruster with a discharge energy of 5 J was measured and found to be (25.34 ± 0.17) km/s (OTOF) and (22.36 ± 4.02) km/s (Doppler shift). In addition, differences between the operation processes of the capillary discharge based pulsed plasma thruster and the electromagnetic pulsed plasma thruster were analyzed.