Within the framework of the co-operation between TWT GmbH Science & Innovation and the Institute of Space Systems (IRS) of the Universität Stuttgart (Germany) a flow and thermal analysis of an arcjet thruster system for a lunar spacecraft is carried out. This work is performed within the scope of the Stuttgart Small Satellite Program - initiated in the year 2002 at the IRS - where a first university lunar space probe is planned to be developed and built. The launch as a piggyback payload is scheduled for the year 2010+. The cube shaped satellite will use two electric propulsion systems as main propulsion systems - a thermal arcjet thruster system and an impulsing magnetoplasmadynamic thruster system, also referred to as PPT. In order to get an optimised design of the thermal arcjet thruster system, TWT GmbH Science & Innovation performs flow and thermal analyses of the thrusters in cooperation with IRS. The thermal arcjet thruster transfers electric energy via Ohmic heating into thermal energy by the discharge through an arc. This results into high temperatures of about 10000 K in the arcjet core. Together with the pressure difference between the discharge chamber and the nozzle exit, the flow simulations are very demanding. In particular, a widely accepted modelling and simulation approach for such a challenging flow and thermal problem based on a commercially available CFD code is still missing. Therefore, different analysis methods are investigated in the framework of this paper so that appropriate prediction approaches can be identified. The available commercial CFD code Star-CD of Cd-Adapco is in general applicable to very demanding flow and thermal investigations, in particular, it is qualified to estimate the thrust and thermal conditions in the propulsion system TALOS as long as it can be assumed that ionisation and dissociation just negligibly influence the temperature load and the thrust. The experimental setup to determine the operating conditions of the propulsion system as well as the applied modelling strategies are described. Based on that, the simulation results are then compared to the experimental measurements. The modelling approaches are evaluated finally.


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    Title :

    Thermal modelling and analysis of electric arcjet thruster TALOS


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2009


    Size :

    8 Seiten, 9 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 9 Quellen



    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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