RESEARCH ON ENHANCEMENT OF IMPULSE FOR ELECTROTHERMAL PULSED PLASMA THRUSTERS ONBOARD SMALL SATELLITES

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Electrothermal PPT has been studied in order to understand physical phenomena and improve thrust performances with both experiments and numerical simulations. The length and diameter of a Teflon discharge room of electrothermal PPTs are changed to find the optimum configuration of PPT heads in very low energy operations for the satellite. Initial impulse bit measurements are conducted, and long operations and endurance tests are also carried out with the optimum PPT configuration. The PPT was operated with a small stored energy of 2.43J per shot. The PPT with a discharge room diameter of 1.0mm and an insulator length of 9.0mm stably generated the highest impulse bit of 250μNs with the highest thrust efficiency of 18%. In the endurance test, the total impulse of about 5Ns, as shown in Fig.2, was achieved in 53,000-shot operation with 2.43J/shot. Finally, the engineering model of PPT system was developed.