Pulsed plasma thrusters (PPTs) using gaseous propellants (Ziemer and Choueiri in Is the gas-fed PPT an electromagnetic accelerator an investigation using measured performance. AIAA 99–2289, 1999; Ziemer et al. in Performance characterization of a high efficiency gas-fed pulsed plasma thruster. AIAA-97–2925, 1997; Ziemer in Performance scaling of gas-fed pulsed plasma thrusters. Princeton University, 2001; Ziemer and Petr in Performance of gas fed pulsed plasma thrusters using water vapour propellant. AIAA 2002–4273, 2002) typically far outperform those using solid propellants in terms of parameters such as specific impulse and propulsion efficiency.(Porneala and Willis in J Phys D Appl Phys 42:1–7, 2009) Therefore, during the PPT operation, first, the propellant is transformed from a solid state to a gaseous or plasma state to ensure that what is actually ionized in the discharge channel or discharge chamber of the thruster is not the solid propellant but rather the gaseous or plasma propellant. In general, the solid propellant cannot be completely converted to a gaseous or plasma state during the laser ablation process. To increase the gas and plasma components in the discharge channel, an intense laser with a nanosecond pulse width is used as the energy source for propellant ablation. This approach is important for improving the PPT propulsion performance.
Numerical Simulation of the Nanosecond Laser Ablation of Al Propellant
Numerical Simulation of Pulsed Plasma Thruster ; Chapter : 4 ; 61-87
2024-10-29
27 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
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