TY - GEN
T1 - Plasma measurements in a 100 W cylindrical Hall thruster
AU - Smirnov, A.
AU - Raitses, Y.
AU - Fisch, N. J.
PY - 2003
Y1 - 2003
N2 - Conventional annular Hall thrusters become inefficient when scaled to low power. Their lifetime decreases significantly due to the channel wall erosion. Cylindrical Hall thrusters, which have lower surface-tovolume ratio and, thus, seem to be more promising for scaling down, exhibit performance comparable with conventional annular Hall thrusters of the similar size. Plasma potential, ion density, and electron temperature profiles were measured inside the 2.6 cm cylindrical Hall thruster with the use of stationary and slow movable emissive and biased Langmuir probes. Potential drop in the 2.6 cm cylindrical Hall thruster is localized mainly in the cylindrical part of the channel and in the plume, which suggests that the thruster should suffer lower erosion of the channel walls due to fast ion bombardment. Plasma density has a maximum of about (2.6-3.8)×1012 cm-3 at the thruster axis. At the discharge voltage of 300 V, the maximum electron temperature is about 21 eV, which is not enough to produce multiple ionization in the accelerated flux of Xe+ ions.
AB - Conventional annular Hall thrusters become inefficient when scaled to low power. Their lifetime decreases significantly due to the channel wall erosion. Cylindrical Hall thrusters, which have lower surface-tovolume ratio and, thus, seem to be more promising for scaling down, exhibit performance comparable with conventional annular Hall thrusters of the similar size. Plasma potential, ion density, and electron temperature profiles were measured inside the 2.6 cm cylindrical Hall thruster with the use of stationary and slow movable emissive and biased Langmuir probes. Potential drop in the 2.6 cm cylindrical Hall thruster is localized mainly in the cylindrical part of the channel and in the plume, which suggests that the thruster should suffer lower erosion of the channel walls due to fast ion bombardment. Plasma density has a maximum of about (2.6-3.8)×1012 cm-3 at the thruster axis. At the discharge voltage of 300 V, the maximum electron temperature is about 21 eV, which is not enough to produce multiple ionization in the accelerated flux of Xe+ ions.
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84897747585
SN - 9781624100987
T3 - 39th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit
BT - 39th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit
T2 - 39th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit 2003
Y2 - 20 July 2003 through 23 July 2003
ER -