This paper describes a setup for thrust measurement in ablative laser propulsion experiments, based on a simple ballistic pendulum associated to an imaging system, which is being assembled at IEAv. A light aluminium pendulum holding samples is placed inside a 100 liters vacuum chamber with two optical windows: the first (in ZnSe) for the laser beam and the second (in fused quartz) for the pendulum visualization. A TEA‐ laser beam is focused to the samples providing ablation and transferring linear moment to the pendulum as a whole. A CCD video camera captures the oscillatory movement of the pendulum and the its trajectory is obtained by image processing. By fitting the trajectory of the pendulum to a dumped sinusoidal curve is possible to obtain the amplitude of the movement which is directly related to the momentum transfered to the sample.
Thrust Measurements in Ballistic Pendulum Ablative Laser Propulsion Experiments
BEAMED ENERGY PROPULSION: Fifth International Symposium on Beamed Energy Propulsion ; 2007 ; Kailua‐Kona (Hawaii)
AIP Conference Proceedings ; 997 , 1 ; 143-146
28.04.2008
4 pages
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
Thrust Measurements in Ballistic Pendulum Ablation Laser Propulsion Experiments
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