Effects of facility backpressure on the performance and plume of a Hall thruster.

Abstract

This dissertation presents research aimed at understanding the relationship between facility background pressure, Hall thruster performance, and plume characteristics. Due to the wide range of facilities used in Hall thruster testing, it is difficult for researchers to make adequate comparisons between data sets because of both dissimilar instrumentation and backpressures. The differences in the data sets are due to the ingestion of background gas into the Hall thruster discharge channel and charge-exchange collisions in the plume. Thus, this research aims to understand facility effects and to develop the tools needed to allow researchers to obtain relevant plume and performance data for a variety of chambers and backpressures. The first portion of this work develops a technique for calibrating a vacuum chamber in terms of pressure to account for elevated backpressures while testing Hall thrusters. Neutral gas background pressure maps of the Large Vacuum Test Facility are created at a series of cold anode flow rates and one hot flow rate at two UM/AFRL P5 5 kW Hall thruster operating conditions. These data show that a cold flow pressure map can be used to approximate the neutral background pressure in the chamber with the thruster in operation. In addition, the data are used to calibrate a numerical model that accurately predicts facility backpressure within a vacuum chamber of specified geometry and pumping speed. The second portion of this work investigates how facility backpressure influences the plume, plume diagnostics, and performance of the P5 Hall thruster. Measurements of the plume and performance characteristics over a wide range of pressures show that ingestion, a decrease in the downstream plasma potential, and broadening of the ion energy distribution function cause the increase in thrust with backpressure. Furthermore, a magnetically-filtered Faraday probe accurately measures ion current density at elevated operating pressures. The third portion of this work aims to develop a fundamental understanding of how multi-kW clustered Hall thrusters operate and how to use single-engine ground-based data to predict the performance, plume interaction, and operation of a cluster. The results show that the plume and operating characteristics of the cluster are governed primarily by the facility backpressure and not the adjacent thruster. At nearly equal backpressure, the thrust is equal to the sum of the thrust of the monolithic thrusters at the lower anode flow rate. At the upper anode flow rate, the sum of the thrust of the monolithic thrusters under predicts the cluster thrust by 5%. This may be caused by each cluster element ingesting unionized propellant from the adjacent thruster. In addition, a cathode sharing investigation shows negligible change in the discharge current and cathode-to-ground voltage for thruster centerline separation distances up to 2 meters. A cathode displacement investigation shows that the Hall thruster starts reliably and performs nominally at cathode separation distances up to 1.1 meters. Collectively, the results of this work shed light on future facility designs that can reduce facility effects at pumping speeds that are not significantly above those of current facilities.