Thrust performance of Liquid‐propellant laser propulsion (LLP) is seriously influenced by factors like laser parameters, choice of propellants and ablation materials. For the purpose of studying these influences, series of impulse measuring experiments for various propellants and ablation materials were conducted. The key device is a Horizontal Momentum Measuring Lever, which covers a C m measuring range from 10 3 Ns / MJ to about 1.6×10 4 Ns / MJ . A Nd:YAG laser was used as the laser source. From the result, it is found that laser energy density plays an important role on LLP efficiency, higher energy density leads to higher C m and I sp . Highest C m of about 10 4 Ns / MJ with the I sp of 3.57s was achieved by focusing the laser to the average energy density of 8.83×10 8 W / cm 2 . Besides of that, it is also found that when the energy density is certainly high, C m of LLP increases stably with the increase of the propellant thickness, which gives a potential way to further improve the thrust performance in LLP.


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    Title :

    Experimental Investigation of Liquid‐propellant Laser Propulsion with a Horizontal Momentum Measuring Lever


    Contributors:
    Wang, Bin (author) / Li, Long (author) / Tang, Zhi‐ping (author) / Cai, Jian (author) / Phipps, Claude (editor) / Komurasaki, Kimiya (editor) / Sinko, John (editor)

    Conference:

    BEAMED ENERGY PROPULSION: 6th International Symposium ; 2009 ; Scottsdale (Arizona)


    Published in:

    AIP Conference Proceedings ; 1230 , 1 ; 243-253


    Publication date :

    2010-05-06


    Size :

    11 pages





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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