The object of our study was to train a reduced-fidelity model for individual emitter behavior within a porous conical type electrospray array thruster on data taken over the entire array, which is the sum over all the emitters. By leveraging surface profilometry to measure the variance in geometry in the array, we then gain insight into the individual emitter dynamics. By rigorously predicating uncertainty in the predictions made by the model on uncertainty over its inputs, we can then understand the major sources of uncertainty in the system.
The raw experimental data which inform this inference and prediction study were acquired in April of 2024 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's MicroPropulsion Laboratory, with special thanks to Colleen Marrese-Reading and Steven Arestie. These and other results are reported in a separate manuscript:
C. B. Whittaker, B. A. Jorns, S. M. Arestie, and C. M. Marrese-Reading, in 38th International Electric Propulsion Conference (Electric Rocket Propulsion Society, 2024) p. 730.
The thruster used in these experiments was fabricated at the University of Michigan in March of 2024.
The analysis underlying this work was conducted from September of 2024 to January of 2025. This work was supported by a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity (80NSSC21K1247). This research was also supported in part through computational resources and services provided by Advanced Research Computing, a division of Information and Technology Services at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Finally, this work was performed in part at the University of Michigan Lurie Nanofabrication Facility.
