A Comprehensive Investigation Of Facility Effects On The Testing Of High Power Monolithic And Clustered Hall Thruster Systems

A Comprehensive Investigation of Facility Effects on the Testing of High-Power Monolithic and Clustered Hall Thruster Systems

The USAF has identified high-power Electric Propulsion (EP) as an enabling technology for orbital transfer vehicles and re-supply ships. While the path for developing high-power EP systems is somewhat certain given NASA's recent success with its 70+ kW NASA-457M Hall thruster, it is clear that testing 50-kW-class thrusters in current test facilities is of concern given the high facility pressures. In response to this issue, the USAF has embarked on the concept of clustering the use of multiple Hall thrusters in a propulsion array-to allow a single thruster to be ground-tested on behalf of the entire cluster. While clustering is a logical approach to high-power EP, there is no fundamental understanding of how clustered thrusters operate or how one can use single-engine ground-based data to predict the performance, life, or interaction among engines, and the potential spacecraft integration issues associated with clustering. Our program addresses these issues by characterizing the influence of tank pressure on performance and plume characteristics for monolithic and clustered thrusters. We report on our second year studies on clustering, about how chamber pressure influences ion current density distribution, and summarize findings from cold- and hot-flow pressure map data of our vacuum chamber for a number of Hall thruster mass flow rates.

Meeting of Board of Regents

Effects of Facility Backpressure on the Performance and Plume of a Hall Thruster