Study On Ionization Characteristics And Optimization Of High-power Cylindrical Hall Thruster

In recent years, international spaceflight entered a new peak of development. Space exploration activities on the moon,Mars and other solar systems are emerging in an endless stream, these plans proposed higher requirement for propulsion system on the high payload ratio, high efficiency, long life and low cost, etc. Electric propulsion has a higher impulse,which makes it can save a lot of propellant. Compared with chemical propulsion,the electric propulsion has a great advantage. However, the existing electric propulsion system’s power is generally lower, thrust is smaller. And manned deep space detection spacecraft is much heavier and the task cycle can not be too long, so only the high power electric propulsion system can satisfy the demands of the task. In order to meet the demand of geosynchronous orbit satellites long-distance rail promotion, orbit transfer and get the goal of making electric propulsion as a main propulsion device of deep space exploration detector and interstellar navigation detector in the future, the development of high-power thruster is bound to become the main development trend of propulsion system. In this paper, the cylindrical Hall thruster studied is one of the high power electric propulsion. In order to verify the feasibility of the design, firstly, we processed a scaled prototype. The work of this paper is studying on the ionization characteristics of the prototype using experiment and numerical simulation method.First of all, the experiment of the scaled prototype was carried out. And we get the thruster discharge current, thrust, anode impulse and anode efficiency’s variation law with variation of the discharge voltage and anode flux. We also get the radial distribution of ion current density under different anode flux and discharge voltage, and hence getting the working medium utilization’s variation law with the variation of discharge voltage and anode flux.The experiment is very difficult to obtain the detail parameters distribution in the thruster channel. Therefore, in order to understand the micro ionization characteristics of the thruster,we could use the numerical simulation method. In this paper, we adopts PIC particle simulation method to study on the ionization characteristics of the cylindrical hall thruster,and the main contents includes: when the magnetic field and anode flux is constant, studying on ionization characteristics of the thruster changes with discharge voltage; When the magnetic field and discharge voltage is constant, studying on ionization characteristics of the thruster changes with anode flux; When the magnetic field configuration and anode flux is unchanged, according to the relation between magnetic field intensity and discharge voltage,enlarge magnetic field intensity with discharge voltage increasing, and then studying on ionization characteristics of the thruster changes with the discharge voltage, as well as the ionization characteristics changes with the magnetic field intensity; Finally, under different ratio of height to medium diameter, studying the annular diffuser area’s effect on ionization characteristics, and which has been proved to be effective in optimizing the ionization characteristics of the cylindrical hall thruster.