Study of the gas-fed pulsed-plasma thruster

張博宇^{1, *}, 陳德岳¹, 黃丙翰 ², 李約亨 ^2
1國立成功大學太空與電漿科學研究所
²國立成功大學航空太空工程學系
*pchang@mail.ncku.edu.tw

摘要 (abstract)

Small satellites are becoming popular nowadays. Thrusters of small size and light weight are required for small satellites. Therefore, we are developing a gas-fed pulsed-plasma thruster (gas-fed PPT) suitable for small satellites. Different from a conventional pulsed-plasma thruster, which uses a solid propellant, gas is used as the propellant so that the amount of propellant is under better control. The gas-fed PPT consists of a gas cylinder filled with 10-atm Ar gas, a pulsed valve, a convergent-divergent nozzle, and a high-voltage pulse generator using inductive storage. The thruster can be operated in two different modes: cold-gas mode and PPT mode. In the cold-gas mode, a supersonic gas puff is provided without activating the high-voltage pulse generator. In the PPT mode, a plasma plume is generated by the arc discharge initiated by the high-voltage pulse generator. To study the performance, we used a 532-nm pulsed laser with a pulse width of 5 ns as a backlighter to take images of the gas puff/plasma plume. Shock diamonds were observed indicating that supersonic flows were generated. The density measurement using an interferometer showed that densities of the gas puff and the plasma plume are ~10¹⁹ cm^-3 and ~10¹⁸ cm^-3, i.e., the ionization level of 10 % was achieved. The design and the testing results will be presented.

關鍵詞：Pulsed-plasma thruster, electrical propulstion