Velocity and total pressure measurements in the two-stage hybrid thruster tihtus

Abstract

A novel two-stage thermal-inductive hybrid thruster of the Universitat Stuttgart (TIHTUS) is under development at the Institut fur Raumfahrtsysteme (IRS). It provides the possibility to supply power and mass- §ow through either stage into the plasma. A variation of power-and mass§ow-staging was investigated with a Pitot probe and an electric timeof- §ight probe. The present paper discloses the radially resolved measurement results of total pressure and plasma velocity at a downstream position of 200 mm. Furthermore, a method is presented to access radially resolved §ow temperature from the combined pressure and velocity measurement. The temperature data are also presented. For a sum of powers of 50 kW at 300 mg/s, the Pitot pressure maximum is at 85 Pa while maximum velocity is measured as 9,224 and 10,350 m/s for two respective conditions. On the plume axis, the temperatures reach up to 9000 K.

Activities in Electric Propulsion Development at IRS

“…A hybrid plasma thruster is under experimental 5,32) and numerical 33) investigation. TIHTUS (Thermal-Inductive Heated Thruster of the Universität Stuttgart) is two-staged and consists of an arcjet as the first stage and an inductively heated plasma generator (IPG) as the second stage 34) .…”

“…A further development is related to TIHTUS 5) . The concept consists of a thermal arcjet thruster and an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) stage.…”