abstract: Two methods of improving the life and efficiency of the Pulsed Inductive Thruster (PIT) have been investigated. The first is a trade study of available switches to determine the best device to implement in the PIT design. The second is the design of a coil to improve coupling between the accelerator coil and the plasma. Experiments were done with both permanent and electromagnets to investigate the feasibility of implementing a modified Halbach array within the PIT to promote better plasma coupling and decrease the unused space within the thruster. This array proved to promote more complete coupling on the edges of the coil where it had been weak in previous studies. Numerical analysis was done to predict the performance of a PIT that utilized each suggested switch type. This model utilized the Alfven velocity to determine the critical mass and energy of these theoretical thrusters. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Aerospace Engineering 2018

Electric propulsion systems utilize electrical energy to produce thrust for spacecraft propulsion. These systems have multiple applications ranging from Earth orbit North-South station keeping to solar system exploratory missions such as NASA’s Discovery, New Frontiers, and Flagship class missions that focus on exploring scientifically interesting targets. In an electromagnetic thruster, a magnetic field interacting with current in an ionized gas (plasma) accelerates the propellant to produce thrust. Pulsed inductive thrusters rely on an electrodeless discharge where both the magnetic field in the plasma and the plasma current are induced by a time-varying current in an external circuit. The multi-dimensional acceleration model for a pulsed inductive plasma thruster consists of a set of circuit equations describing the electrical behavior of the thruster coupled to a one-dimensional momentum equation that allow for estimating thruster performance. Current models lack a method to account for the time-varying energy distribution in an inductive plasma accelerator.