Thermal Management and Krypton Performance of the H10 High Power Density Hall Thruster

Recent literature has shown a variety of benefits towards Hall thrusters operating at higher thrust and power density, including more efficient ionization with alternate propellants, higher specific impulse capability, higher power throttling ranges, and smaller form factors. These benefits have largely remained untapped due to concerns with thruster lifetime and thruster thermal design exceeding material thermal limits, and so thrusters have been limited in their power density. The H10 Hall thruster was developed at JPL to operate at much higher power densities to realize these benefits, which was achieved by leveraging several of the latest developments in Hall thruster technology and a novel internal geometry. This has resulted in a Hall thruster that operates at 3x the power density of state of the art Hall thrusters, a power throttling ratio of 100:1, and demonstrated specific impulse capability up to 3,400 s. Thermal steady state and performance data is shown for high power operation on xenon, as well as performance on krypton, where temperatures are typically higher than that of xenon. Total efficiency on xenon reached as high as 76% for high voltages, while total efficiency for krypton appeared to peak at high current and low voltage (400 V, 25 A) for the same discharge power to a value of 64%. Several notable oscillation modes were observed to have temperature dependence during these steady-state operations, which are shown with some discussion. To achieve even higher power density, work towards integrating oscillating heat pipes by additively manufacturing them into the magnetic circuit is presented, with preliminary results, where thermal conductivity over 1000 W/mK was measured.

搜集汇总

背景与挑战

背景概述

该数据集总结了H10高功率密度霍尔推进器在热管理和氪气性能方面的研究，展示了其通过创新设计实现比现有先进霍尔推进器高3倍的功率密度、100:1的功率调节比以及高达3400秒的比冲能力。数据集提供了氙气和氪气推进剂下的热稳态与性能数据，其中氙气在高压下总效率达76%，氪气在特定条件下峰值效率为64%，并探讨了温度相关振荡模式及集成振荡热管以进一步提升功率密度的初步成果。