Investigation on plume interference effect of solid propellant micro-thruster

The three-dimensional numerical simulation of two-phase plume flow of solid propellant micro-thrusters was developed.Then it was used to investigate the plume interference effect by combining the direct simulation Monte Carlo(DSMC) method for multi-component gas flow with the two-way coupling model for two-phase rarefied flow.At different space between the two micro-thrusters and different wall temperature,the plume interference effect was analyzed specifically.The results show that under the plume interference effect the gas is compressed and the flow direction is changed,which resulted in the increasing of gas pressure and temperature;solid phase made no significant effect on the flow parameters of gas phase;with the rising of the space between the two micro-thrusters,the maximum pressure decreased and the maximum temperature increased in the domain under the plume interference effect;the wall temperature could influence the temperature of the gas which is extremely close to the wall,but not the gas pressure.

Effect of Pressure Level on the Performance of an Auto-Initiated Pulsed Plasma Thruster

Pulsed plasma thrusters （PPT） are micro-propulsion devices used in satellites for station keeping. Conventionally the plasma discharge in a PPT is initiated by a spark plug. The primary objective of the present work was to develop and characterize a PPT that does not need a spark plug to initiate the plasma discharge. If the spark plug is eliminated, the size of the thrusters can be reduced and arrays of such thrusters can be manufactured using micro electro mechanical systems （MEMS） techniques, which can provide tremendous control authority over the satellite positioning. A parallel rail thruster was built and its performances were characterized inside a vacuum chamber to elucidate the effect of vacuum level on the performance. The electrical performance of the thruster was quantified by measuring the voltage output from a Rogowski coil, and the thrust produced by the developed thruster was estimated by measuring the force exerted by the plume on a light weight pendulum, whose deflection was measured using a laser displacement sensor. It was observed that the thruster can operate without a spark plug. In general, the performance parameters such as thrust, mass ablation, impulse bit, and specific impulse per discharge, would increase with the increase in pressure up to an optimum level due to the increase in discharge energy as well as the decrease in the total impedance of the plasma discharge. The thrust efficiency is found to be affected by the discharge energy.