Design of a thrust balance for RF plasma thruster characterization

Trezzolani, Fabio; Romero, I. Pita; Bosi, Franco Javier; Melazzi, Davide; Pavarin, Daniele; Manente, Marco; Selmo, A.

doi:10.1109/metroaerospace.2014.6865969

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…The main goal is to design and develop low-power space plasma thrusters based on helical radio frequency technology. The thruster level is 1.5 mN-50 W, using argon as a propellant, and a target speci c impulse of 1200 s [21]. The experimental prototypes EM01 and EM02 working under vacuum conditions were developed, and the engineering prototype QM (Quali cation Model) series [22] was further studied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and testing of a Mini-RF plasma thruster with permanent magnets

Sun,

Zhang,

Zhang

2023

Preprint

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Compared with traditional electric propulsion, RF plasma thruster have attracted much attention due to their characteristics of no electrodes, long life, and high ionization rate. In recent years, the development of micro-nano satellites has put forward requirements for the miniaturization, modularization, and integration of satellite thrusters, and the miniaturization of RF plasma thrusters has a broad prospect. In this paper, a mini-RF plasma thruster with a discharge chamber inner diameter of 10 mm is designed, and a magnetic field is generated around it by two annular samarium cobalt permanent magnets. The discharge state and plasma parameters of the mini-RF thruster are tested using optical emission spectrometry (OES) and target thrust stand. In the experiment, we changed the flow rate of argon gas, the presence or absence of a magnetic field, the power of the RF source and analyzed the effects of these factors on the mode transition, plasma density, electron temperature, and thrust. According to the experimental results, it is found that the magnetic field (maximum strength 0.14T) helps to increase the plasma density at low power but delay the jump power threshold of the CCP-ICP.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%