Performance of a 4 cm iodine-fueled radio frequency ion thruster

The performance of an iodine radio ion thruster with a 4 cm diameter(IRIT4)was studied experimentally in this paper.Regulation of the mass flow rates of the iodine propellant is achieved by using a temperature control method of the iodine reservoir.Performance of the thruster using iodine as propellants is obtained at different total thruster powers of 40.6–128.8 W,different grid voltages of 1000–1800 V and the iodine flow rate of 100μgs^(-1).Results show that thrust and specific impulse increase approximately linearly with the increasing total thruster power and the screen grid voltage.The thrust of 2.32 mN and the specific impulse of 2361 s are obtained at the nominal total thruster power of 95.8 W and the screen grid voltage of 1800 V.It is also indicated that performance of the iodine propellant is comparable to that of the xenon propellant;and a difference between them is that the iodine thrust is slightly higher than xenon when the total thruster power is more than 62 W.At the nominal 95.8 W total thruster power,the thrust values of them are 2.32 m N and 2.15 mN respectively,and the thrust-to-power ratios of them are 24.2 mN kW^(-1)and 23.5 mN kW^(-1),respectively.

Influence of anode temperature on ignition performance of the IRIT4-2D iodine-fueled radio frequency ion thruster

This paper reports the ignition performance of the iodine-fueled radio frequency(RF)ion thruster(IRIT)at different anode temperaturesT_(a0).The experimental results show that the anode temperature plays important role on the ignition process of the IRIT.There were two characteristic temperatures related to the anode:the minimum ignition temperatureT_(i0)and the stable ignition temperatureT_(is),which were much lower than the pipeline temperature and the storage tank temperature.AtT_(a0)<T_(i0),it failed to discharge.WhenT_(i0)≤T_(a0)<T_(is),it was ignited with dramatical oscillations.AtT_(a0)≥T_(is),the discharge was stable in a large anode temperature range.The analysis showed that the different discharge phenomena at different anode temperatures were attributed to the change of iodine flow rate during the process of the iodine deposition-clogging and sublimation-clearing inside the thruster.The research helps improve the preheating design of the iodine-fueled electric thruster.