Performance of Dimethyl Ether Arcjet Thrusters and its Dependence on Electrode Configurations

Kakami, Akira; Beppu, Shinji; Maiguma, Muneyuki; Tachibana, Takeshi

doi:10.2514/1.58455

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…With the increasing desire to reduce satellite launch costs and increase satellite service life, arcjet thrusters are destined to become one of the standard electric propulsion thrusters for satellite stationkeeping and have been proposed for other propulsion applications such as longitude correction and orbit transfer. Low-power arcjet thruster systems with hydrazine as the propellant have been flight qualified and successfully used on commercial geosynchronous satellites for their north-south station-keeping (NSSK) in the United States [4,5]. In 2002, Kodama, a Japanese data-transmitting satellite, launched using arcjet thrusters for north-south station-keeping [5,6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Low-power arcjet thruster systems with hydrazine as the propellant have been flight qualified and successfully used on commercial geosynchronous satellites for their north-south station-keeping (NSSK) in the United States [4,5]. In 2002, Kodama, a Japanese data-transmitting satellite, launched using arcjet thrusters for north-south station-keeping [5,6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Chemical Nonequilibrium Modeling of Low-Power Nitrogen/Hydrogen Arcjet Thrusters

Wei¹,

Wang

2016

Journal of Propulsion and Power

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Departures from thermal, chemical equilibrium of a plasma flow in a low-power arcjet thruster with a 1:2 nitrogen/ hydrogen mixture as the working gas have been studied by axisymmetric numerical simulations. Electrons, ions, atoms, and molecules are represented as separate chemical species in the plasma mixtures of nitrogen and hydrogen. The predicted temperatures and densities of the electrons, heavy particles, and plasma velocity are presented throughout the whole flowfield of the nozzle. Significant temperature discrepancies between electrons and heavy species have been found in the near-anode wall region, which indicates that thermal nonequilibrium largely controls the near-anode electron densities and furtherly governs current attachment on the anode. The distributions of nitrogen and hydrogen species inside the arcjet thruster are also examined. It is found that the enrichments of hydrogen species at the center of the thruster and anode surface are due to different reasons. Some important kinetic processes that determine the dissociation and ionization processes of nitrogen/hydrogen species are presented and the relative importance of these kinetic processes is analyzed. In the anode region, the ionization rate of the hydrogen species is much larger than that of the nitrogen species, which infers that the charge carriers for electric conduction to anode are most contributed from the ionization of hydrogen species.

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