Study on the influence of magnetic mirror ratio on the erosion of the bottom channel of cylindrical Hall thruster with magnetically insulated anode

Abstract

A cylindrical Hall thruster with a magnetically insulated anode structure was found experimentally to experience erosion sputtering at the bottom of the ceramic channel. In this study, a Particle-In-Cell numerical simulation was used to analyze the influence of the magnetic mirror effect on the ion current density, ion energy, and deposition power density bombardment at the bottom of the discharge channel. The research findings show that, as the magnetic mirror ratio grows, the stronger magnetic mirror effect confines the ions in the boron nitride channel, leading to a decrease in the ion current density and ion energy bombarding the bottom of discharge bottom. Further statistics show that the deposition power density decreases as the magnetic mirror ratio grows, indicating that increasing the magnetic mirror ratio can effectively alleviate the erosion sputtering at the bottom.