分块阳极式激光支持的脉冲等离子体推力器实验研究

通过纳秒激光烧蚀羽流特性的研究证实了羽流分裂现象的存在,为了抑制羽流分裂现象可能带来的滞后烧蚀而将分块阳极构型引入激光支持的脉冲等离子体推力器中,由此首次提出了分块阳极式激光支持的脉冲等离子体推力器的概念.通过实验对比研究了分块阳极和正常阳极构型的放电特性参数、性能参数和放电电弧发展演化等特性.结果表明,分块阳极构型能...

Experimental Study of Laser Assisted Pulsed Plasma Thruster with Segmented Anode

In this paper, the existence of plume splitting was proved through the study of nanosecond laser ablation plume characteristics. In order to suppress the late-time ablation that the plume splitting may bring, the segmented anode configuration was introduced into the laser-assisted pulse plasma thruster (LAPPT) and the concept of LAPPT with a segmented anode was proposed for the first time. The discharge characteristic parameters, performance parameters as well as the evolution of discharge arc of the segmented anode and normal anode configurations are studied by experiments. The results show that the segmented anode configuration can obtain a higher peak current than the normal anode configuration, especially for the peak current after the main discharge, which can improve the ionization and acceleration of the propellant entering the discharge channel late because of the slow speed, so as to achieve the purpose of suppressing the late-time ablation. The current square integral value of segmented anode configuration is higher than that of normal anode configuration, which indicates that segmented anode configuration can obtain better propulsion performance than normal anode configuration. According to the discharge current characteristics of the second stage of the segmented anode configuration, the electromagnetic force to accelerate plasma is mainly provided in the first stage of the segmented anode. The segmented anode configuration can reduce the total resistance of the discharge circuit, but this configuration will increase the discharge delay time compared with the normal anode configuration. At the same time, by analyzing the development and evolution of the discharge arc between the anode and cathode plates, the reasons for the segmented anode configuration to improve the propulsion performance of the thruster are obtained: by limiting the speed of the anode arc point moving to the end of anode, the current density between the plates is improved, thereby improving the performance of the thruster.