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Search theses and dissertations gathered from participating repositories worldwide. Every result links back to the library that holds it. No account is needed.
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Showing 1 to 15 of 15 for “"Plasma thrusters"”.
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Transient antenna-plasma interaction in inductive plasma thrusters
… technologies under consideration, inductive plasma thrusters are a promising candidate due to their high thrust density and proven propellant flexibility. In contrast with conventional space propulsion technologies, inductive coupling can deliver energy to a propellant without direct contact, …
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A mechanism to accelerate the late ablation in pulsed plasma thrusters
Pulsed Plasma Thrusters (PPTs) are long standing electric propulsion thrusters that are reliable, relatively simple and low cost. One of the main issues with the PPT is its poor utilization of the propellant and low efficiency. Typically only 40-60% of the propellant contributes to the production …
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Propellant Surface Temperature and Plume Characteristics of Micro-Pulsed Plasma Thrusters
The micro-Pulsed Plasma Thruster is a device capable of supplying discrete impulses for propulsive maneuvering of small satellites. These devices suffer from low propellant utilization related to late-time propellant ablation, causing a drop in specific impulse and thruster efficiency. The exhaust …
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Developing a space shuttle experiment for Hall and pulsed plasma thrusters
Very little data on Hall and Pulsed Plasma Thrusters has been taken in the hard vacuum of space. The Environment Effects Verifatication experiment is designed to take archival-quality data in space in the plume and far-field regions of these thrusters. Student involvement is a key element of the …
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Linear 1-D analysis of oscillation instabilities in stationary plasma thrusters
… observed during the operation of Stationary Plasma Thrusters. The first six solutions of this l st order perturbation model were determined by scanning the complex frequency plane and were addressed in this study. Of these modes, two notable patterns of behavior were found and discussed. The …
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A novel measurment of net erosion and plasma-material interaction in plasma thrusters
The lifetime of plasma thrusters is usually limited not by depletion of the propellant supply, but by erosion of the magnetic circuit from plasma particles bombarding the walls of the acceleration channel leading eventually to catastrophic engine failure. As erosion is the primary failure mode of …
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Design of a cusped field plasma thruster
A plasma space propulsion thruster has been designed. It is classified as a Cusped Field Thruster (CFT), which refers to the geometry of the magnetic field that influences the flow of electrons and ions. The thruster was modeled after an original Diverging Cusped Field Thruster (DCFT) developed at …
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The plasma focus as a thruster
… thesis presents the thrust modeling of the Dense Plasma Focus plasma motion phases. It also contrasts some of the engineering tradeoffs between the existing coaxial plasma thrusters and the Dense Plasma Focus. Modeling the thrust generated by the DPF started with seeing how far the working models …
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Two-dimensional numerical modeling of Radio-Frequency ion engine discharge
… various scaling penalties. Of high-performance plasma thrusters, the radio-frequency ion engine is most likely to succeed in scaling as it does not require an externally applied magnetic field and is structurally simple to construct. As part of a design package an original two-dimensional …
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Development and characterization of a diverging cusped field thruster and a lanthanum hexaboride hollow cathode
A low power, magnetically confined plasma thruster has been developed and undergone preliminary characterization. The design employs cusped magnetic fields arranged in a divergent fashion to confine electron flow to an anode while providing efficient acceleration of an ion beam, similar to …
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Radio-Frequency Plasma Expansion in Different Magnetic Nozzle Configurations
… conducted in the novel radio-frequency plasma device Moa. The research focuses on the effects of magnetic field strength and orientation on plasma expansion and ion acceleration when the location of plasma excitation is decoupled from the magnetic nozzle (MN) throat with the aim to …
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Continuum Kinetic Simulations of Plasma Sheaths and Instabilities
A careful study of plasma-material interactions is essential to understand and improve the operation of devices where plasma contacts a wall such as plasma thrusters, fusion devices, spacecraft-environment interactions, to name a few. This work aims to advance our understanding of fundamental …
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Divergent Plume Reduction of a High-Efficiency Multistage Plasma Thruster
<p>High Efficiency Multistage Plasma Thrusters (HEMPTs) are a relatively new form of electric propulsion that show promise for use on a variety of missions and have several advantages over their older EP competitors. One such advantage is their long predicted lifetime and minimal wall erosion due …
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Development of the plasma thruster particle-in-cell simulator to complement empirical studies of a low-power cusped-field thruster
Cusped-field plasma thrusters are an electric propulsion concept being investigated by several laboratories in the United States and Europe. This technology was implemented as a low-power prototype in 2007 to ascertain if durability and performance improvements over comparable Hall thruster designs …
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Advanced propulsion for microsatellites
… determine the performance of the individual thrusters at small scale. Hall thrusters were initially identified as most promising. In an effort to miniaturize the Hall thruster, a number of complications have been encountered. Some of the most troublesome were higher magnetic field …