Investigation of the effect of hollow cathode neutralizer location on hall effect thruster efficiency

Author

Turan, Nazli ; Korkmaz, Oguz ; Celik, Murat

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. Eng., Bogazici Univ., Istanbul, Turkey

fYear

2015

Firstpage

599

Lastpage

604

Abstract

Neutralization of ions is important for all electric thruster types when considering thruster efficiency and life. Hollow cathode is responsible for both creating plasma discharge and neutralization of the beam ions for Hall Effect Thruster (HET). In this study, appropriate placement of the cathode is investigated by taking into account that the decrease in cathode coupling voltage increases thruster efficiency. Regarding this, the effects of mass flow rate of the cathode and keeper current on the coupling voltage are investigated, according to available experimental results from the literature.

Keywords

cathodes; couplings; glow discharges; ion beam applications; ion engines; plasma devices; HET; cathode coupling voltage; cathode mass flow rate; electric thruster; hall effect thruster efficiency; hollow cathode neutralizer location effect; ion beam neutralization; ion beam plasma discharge; Cathodes; Couplings; Discharges (electric); Fault diagnosis; Hall effect; Ions; Propulsion; hall effect thruster; ion beam neutralization; neutralizer cathode;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Recent Advances in Space Technologies (RAST), 2015 7th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Istanbul

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-7760-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RAST.2015.7208414

Filename

7208414