This study follows after work conducted first for my dissertation and is presently being prepared for journal submission. The goal of our analysis was to analyze a small design space for an electrospray array thruster---varying the geometry of its emitters, the size of its extractor apertures, and its operating voltage---to determine designs robust to uncertainty. That is, we use a model for array performance whose input parameters we treat as uncertain (stemming from approximations to higher-order physics, manufacturing tolerances in fabricating a thruster, and so on). Making these predictions as a function of design, then, we can identify configurations that are performant robust to this uncertainty (i.e., still meet required performance specifications with high confidence).
The data which inform this trade study are taken pricipally from our pending manuscript "Emitter Model Inference from Electrospray Array Thruster Tests", and from my thesis, "Designing Porous Electrospray Array Thrusters Under Uncertainty" (linked to the dataset as published).
The analysis was conducted in January and February 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.
