Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Les propulseurs de Hall sont l’une des techniques de propulsion fusée par plasma les plus utilisés. Ils possèdent une impulsion spécifique moyenne et un haut rapport poussé sur puissance qui les rend idéal pour une grande partie des applications commerciales et scientifiques. Une de leurs limitations principales est l’érosion des parois du propulseur par le plasma qui réduit leur durée de vie. La topologie dite “d’écrantage magnétique” est une solution proposée pour prolonger cette durée de vie. Elle est ici appliquée à un petit propulseur de Hall de 200W. Dans cette thèse les règles de mise à l’échelle pour les propulseurs de Hall de la gamme de 100 à 200W sont testées expérimentalement. Un propulseur écranté de 200W est comparé avec un propulseur standard similaire. Le comportement des ions dans ces deux moteurs est extrêmement différent. Des mesures de performance ont été réalisées avec des parois en BN-SiO2 et graphite. Le courant de décharge augmente de 25% avec le graphite dans le propulseur non-écranté. Le résultat et un rendement maximum de 38% avec le nitrure de bore mais de seulement 31% pour le graphite. Le propulseur écranté quant à lui n’atteint que 25% de rendement quel que soit le matériau.Cette baisse de performance dans les petits moteurs écrantés peut être attribuée à un mauvais rendement d’utilisation de l’ergol. Analyses des résultats expérimentaux ainsi que la conduite de simulations suggèrent que cela est dû au fait que la zone d’ionisation ne couvre pas l’ensemble du canal de décharge. Un nouveau design pour un petit propulseur de Hall écranté est proposé. / Hall thrusters are one of the most used rocket electric propulsion technology. They combine moderate specific impulse with high thrust to power ratio which makes them ideal for a wide range of practical commercial and scientific applications. One of their limitations is the erosion of the thruster walls which reduces their lifespan.The magnetic shielding topology is a proposed solution to prolong the lifespan. It is implemented on a small200W Hall thruster.In this thesis the scaling of classical unshielded Hall thrusters down to 200 and 100W is discussed. A 200W low power magnetically shielded Hall thruster is compared with an identically sized unshielded one. The ion behavior inside the thruster is measured and significant differences are found across the discharge channel.Both thrusters are tested with classical BN-SiO2 and graphite walls. The magnetically shielded thruster is not sensitive to the material change while the discharge current increase by 25% in the unshielded one. The result is a maximum efficiency of 38% for boron nitride in the unshielded thruster but only 31% with graphite.The shielded thruster achieves a significantly lower efficiency with only 25% efficiency with both materials.Analysis of the experimental results as well as simulations of the thrusters reveal that the performance difference is mostly caused by low propellant utilization. This low propellant utilization comes from the fact that the ionization region doesn’t cover all of the discharge channel. A new magnetically shielded thruster is designed to solve this issue.

<p>Prior to the mid-20th century, the idea of electric propulsion had been all but a foreign one that manifested itself in the topic of science fiction. It was around this time when companies and agencies like NASA began to take interest in the topic of space propulsion, as most famously seen in the landing of the Apollo 11 mission on the moon. It was not until the early-1960s where the idea of a pulsed plasma thruster was first realized, with its first test being in 1964 aboard the Russian Zond-2 satellite which contained 6 ablative Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, or “Teflon”) pulsed plasma thrusters.</p> <p>In this paper, a new low-voltage, liquid-fed pulsed plasma thruster was developed, tested, and characterized. This project took influence from the previous low-voltage, liquid-fed pulsed plasma thruster in Purdue’s EPPL and desired to transition it from a current gas-fed system to its intended liquid-fed system. The two main objectives for this project included conducting direct studies of the cathode’s erosion rate using a simple weighing method after simulating a lifetime of discharging the thruster, and completing the initial design of the liquid-fed pulsed plasma thruster using AF-M315E as its propellant while gathering data on its required breakdown voltage, exhaust velocity, and specific impulse.</p> <p>Both objectives were successfully completed, with the following parameters being measured or calculated. The required breakdown voltage was seen to be less than 26kV to keep the ignition spark inside the chamber. For the subsequent results measured however, the breakdown voltage was kept between 10-16kV for all successive tests. The peak current measured for all discharges was an average of 11kA, far exceeding similar geometries such as MPD thrusters. The operational voltage was less than 200V, although an operational voltage closer to 100V is expected after further optimization of the system is completed. The erosion rate of the tungsten cathode at this operational setting was found to be 15.4046 +/- 0.592 microgram/Coulomb which is much less than the cathode spot erosion rate reported for tungsten in literature of about 60 microgram/Coulomb and is beneficial for extending system lifetime. The exhaust velocity was calculated to be 30.6 +/- 4.8km/s which is typical of state-of-the-art PPT electric propulsion devices. The specific impulse was also extrapolated from the ion’s exhaust velocity, calculating to be 3,119 +/- 489 seconds. Future work would require optimization of the propellant injection mechanism to minimize propellant loss.</p>