Recently great emphasize was put forward into high power Hall thruster development. Among Hall thruster technologies, the thruster with anode layer (TAL) seems to have much wider technical capabilities. In this paper, various aspects of the plasma flow in a high power thruster with anode layer are studied. A model of plasma flow in the TAL channel is developed based on a 2D hydrodynamic approac...

Nonlinear pulse width modulation (PWM) controlled system is considered to achieve control performance of thrustercontrolled spacecraft. The actual PWM controlled motions occur, very closely, around the average model trajectory. Furthermore nonlinear PWM controller design can be directly applied to thruster controlled spacecraft to determine thruster on-time. Sliding mode control for attitude tr...

This article developed an ion thruster optic system sputter erosion depth numerical 3D model by IFE-PIC (Immersed Finite Element-Particle-in-Cell) and Mont Carlo method, and calculated the downstream surface sputter erosion rate of accelerator grid; compared with LIPS-200 life test data. The results of the numerical model are in reasonable agreement with the measured data. Finally, we predicted...

The ion energy distribution of each ion species in the SPT-100 plume was obtained at various angles off thruster axis at 1 m and 50 cm from the thruster exit using an ExB probe. Each peak of the measured ExB probe traces were fitted using a model based on the kinetic theory of gases, and the energy distribution functions f(Ei) were obtained. From the fitting parameters, Eb (the beam energy) and...

Breathing mode oscillations of a xenon 600 W Hall effect thruster have been studied using temporally resolved experimental data and numerical modeling. Fluctuations in xenon neutral near infrared (810–835 nm) emission in the near field thruster plume have been measured at 1-μs resolution using a high speed, phase-matched intensified charge coupled device. Oscillations in electron temperature, 3...

With 900 Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) required over the next decade (Newman et al., 2007) existing survey-style AUVs need improved utilization factors. Additional control devices to extend operational capability need consideration together with the interchange between AUV control approaches. This paper considers supplementary through-body tunnel thruster control during the transition f...

It is shown analytically that the thrust from a simple plasma thruster (in the absence of a magnetic field) is given by the maximum upstream electron pressure, even if the plasma diverges downstream. Direct thrust measurements of a thruster are then performed using a pendulum thrust balance and a laser displacement sensor. A maximum thrust of about 2 mN is obtained at 700 W for a thruster lengt...

The University of Michigan and United States Air Force Research Laboratory have jointly created a cluster composed of two P5 Hall effect thrusters. The P5 is a 5 kW class laboratory model Hall thruster developed to investigate a thruster similar to that specified by Integrated High Payoff Rocket Propulsion Technology (IHPRT) goals. In this study, the performance characteristics of each of the P...

This article presents a mathematical model of a complete diesel-electric propulsion system, including components as diesel generators, distribution network, variable speed thruster-drives, and conventional motor loads. The model is split into two parts: One power generating part where the load is speci®ed with an aggregated active and reactive power load demand. Secondly, a power consumption pa...